


In The Absence Of Skulls

by akajustmerry



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Amnesia, F/M, Multi, POV Irene Adler, POV Sherlock Holmes, Post-Episode: s03e03 His Last Vow, Post-Reichenbach, Reichenbach-Related
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-20
Updated: 2017-04-17
Packaged: 2018-05-21 16:02:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 57,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6057544
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akajustmerry/pseuds/akajustmerry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Irene Adler has vanished. </p><p>A year since Moriarty's broadcast, Sherlock Holmes' sanity is already fragile when Molly Hooper calls with a tremble in her voice. There's been a murder in St Bart's morgue and the ghastly scene boasts one inescapable conclusion: Jim Moriarty's network thrives evermore and Sherlock is being hunted for his attempt at dismantling it. But he is not the only target. </p><p>Can Sherlock find Irene Adler to warn her when his last memories of her are faded, fragmented things? How long can he hide what he took from the St Bart's crime scene? Is searching for the Woman worth risking the safety of Molly, or Lestrade or everyone else he cares about? Will he really have a choice?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Of Rats & Shadows

**_And a final amendment; In the event of my sudden, apparent and undisputable death, any and all the contents of my home – “my home” referring hereafter to the residence of 221b Baker Street – will not be bought, moved, sold, rented and will remain in my home and otherwise untouched by any persons in any eventuality._ ** _ – Amendment to the last will and testament of Sherlock Holmes, June 2011 _

__

_Edinburgh's streets are crooked and cunning creatures, not the kind of city where the old cowers in the shadows of progress. But one where the new keeps to the cracks of the old out of respect, out of fear. The city’s buildings curl into the skyline like the claws of an old beast standing proud at the sea’s edge, as if it is warning you. While its alleys and cobbled side streets twist and turn you away from their secrets before you get too close. Leading you between spaces you could have sworn weren't there when you looked before, but you never seem to find again. And no matter where you stand there's ground beneath your shoes and above your eyes, eyes that can't quite make out the ghosts in the drizzle that’s kept the streets shimmering for hundreds of years._

Not that Irene Adler believed in ghosts. But it was a sentiment scorched with irony. She was technically dead, after all.

Licking the rain from her lips, Irene turned her bike down a side alley and killed the engine at the top of the stone stairs that wove crooked and narrow through the backs of the colorful shops. Her boots barely making a slosh, she slid off the seat, shook her hair free from the helmet, dropped it onto the bike seat and pocketed the keys.

The corner of her eye sought the tall lightless window of the shop to her right and, in the light of the street lamp yawning from the main road, she double checked the paint coloring her cheeks and forehead. But her face was so dark she blended with the jagged city sleeping around her. _Good._

Irene took a deep breath, savoring the way the whisper of it scurrying away from her lungs reverberated inside the silence, before she slipped into the shadows. Her heart trembled in her chest, but she lifted the hood of her leather jacket over her hair and held her chin high beneath it. With one final inhale she opened the faded green door beside her bike and, feeling the weight of the detonator in her inside pocket, she descended the stairs beyond.

The vaults of Edinburgh's undercity are not as old as the tour guides in their cheap Halloween costumes chirp. Well, parts of it are not. There are deeper and darker places beyond the tourist warn passages. Because down a spiraling staircase or three, through a few (only publicly) deadlocked doors and a handful of whispered passwords, there is the Pit.

If crime is an industry, the Pit is the industrial run off. A loud cesspool of toxic men, women and the in-between spitting prices at one another through the wrecks of their teeth for unsavory wears.

More specifically, the Pit was the run off from the largest criminal network the world never sees. Only the vilest ended up here. Because only the most violent of the vicious and immoral of the lawless populated the underground wasteland of Victor Trevor’s syndicate.

Irene stood on a platform carved out from the cavern wall. The only thing between her and the miscreants below were some brick stairs, anonymity and a whole lot of fear. The only light on the scene was artificial, haphazardly jutting out of the stone ceiling in the form of ancient industrial lights from the 60s, stretching yellow shadows over her hooded head and the foul bustle of the market below. Even the air tasted rank and stale, like blood and breath and flesh and stone.

Much like the city above, the Pit's levels were hidden by jagged turn-offs. Some of which would ensure you never saw the sun again and lived the remainder of your life lost in the hungry dark between here and the devil.

But the devil wouldn’t control this place for much longer.

Irene straightened her jacket, ensuring her hood was covering her face.

"Admiral?"

She turned her gaze from the scene beneath her towards her lieutenant’s thick highland accent. Marley was younger and shorter than Irene, but not by much. Her mother's Jamaican heritage lingered in her vowels and the rich brown shade of her slender figure, making the green flecks in her eyes as bright as fireflies in this place. Like Irene, she was all dressed in black with her exposed skin painted, hands gloved and hood up. Almost her perfect double. In Irene's head, the detonator hummed in her pocket.

"Yes?" Irene answered just as Marley reached her, clutching her rifle.

"There's a troublemaker in the cages."

Irene sighed. "Isn't that the point?" she replied, turning to face her.  

Marley shook her head, a movement Irene only saw because she was shorter than the rim of her hood, "You're going to want to see to this.” Marley lowered her voice as a riotous band of degenerates scuttled past them, “We can’t afford a proper riot now."

Exhaling, Irene nodded at her, "Come on, then."

Marley turned on her heel and Irene followed her up some narrow steps. They rose and fell clumsily beneath her boots as if they had been hacked drunkenly into the stone, rather than crafted. But a few moments later they were ducking beneath the sharp stone of the cavern roof, before finally reaching the landing above the cages.

Irene couldn’t help but suck in her breath at the sight of them every time she was called here.

The cages were platforms for the purely primal, stages for violent egos burning beneath sharpened teeth. They were half a dozen square cages 1000 feet out of reach of the civilized above, designed for the single purpose of un-ruled hand to hand combat. People crushing in on one another on all sides of every bar to jeer at the bloodshed, and collect the winnings won on shattered bones and lifeless limbs. Men, women, animals, it didn't matter. There are no rules this far from the sun. It also happened to be a terribly profitable way to dispose of filth.

Which meant that the only real trouble makers were the ones that-

"HE'S GOT A FUCKING NEEDLE-"

So there weren't rules, per say. But hand to hand to combat meant hands only. Most relished in the intimacy and, more importantly, paid ‘the Admiral’ a handsome entry fee for its guarantee.

Irene rolled her eyes and held out her arm for her rifle. Marley handed it to her, staying close on her shadow as Irene made her way down more stone steps into the fray. Cocking the rifle as she moved, the brawlers cleared from her path and fell silent as she passed. All but the two men squabbling in the cage above her.

One was...well, fat, and took up a good third of the square caged space with the bulk of his arse alone. But the other was considerably less so. Irene would even go so far as to say it was one the better bloodied up bare torsos she had seen in the last week at least.

As she walked towards them, the fat one hurled himself at his thinner rival. But the rival merely stepped out of the way in a movement so elegant and drowning in familiar arrogance, Irene felt her heart stop just as the fat one's head cracked against the bars of the cage to blood thirsty merriment from the onlookers. Head swaying, he blinked, rolled to his feet and jabbed a sausage sized finger at his opponent. His loosened teeth clattering to the caged arena floor as he spluttered-

"HE STABBED ME WITH A SYRINGE, ADMIRAL- I CANT SEE- I CANT-!"

"Oh, please it's only adrenalin," snarled the thinner one, hiding his hands in the pockets of his torn up trousers and bouncing against his bare heels. Irene turned her gun to face him, stepping up into the cage between the two men as she raised it. But she could only just see him over her hood.

"Everyone knows the penalty is for illicit advantage," she barked at him over the top of jeers from the crowd, trying to stop her heart leaping into her mouth as his pale eyes found hers. They stood out so spectacularly among the purple bruising swallowing his eyes.

"Hardly illicit when the body produces it naturally, innit?" he leered, but Irene shot as his grin scratched his cheeks.

Stumbling back, he clutched at his shoulder as the crowd went mad, but not far enough back that his perfectly aimed spit didn't hit its mark beneath her eye.

The Admiral’s faithful brawlers surged forward before Irene raised the sleeve of her jacket to wipe her cheek. When she looked up they were holding him down before her, the whole gaggle of them poised and pulsing to rip him limb from limb.

"Want us to snap his pretty neck, mam?!" The girl who belonged to the shout was holding his head eagerly between her scarred up fingers, sucking the blood of her own fight off her gums.

"ADMIRAL!" Marley was panting at her side. Irene hadn’t noticed she’d left. "Admiral-!"

"Can't you see I'm busy?" Irene ground the words off her lips.

"But, Admiral, he's here."

The noise stopped. Irene's blood ran cold in her veins. _No. No. No. He’s early._ "Trevor?" She breathed. Marley nodded.

Irene swallowed. "I'll be right there," she whispered. Marley scuttled back towards the stairs.

The crowd had started to chant. Various calls for violence rattled the bars of the cages, filling the air like white noise scraping the stone. Meanwhile, the city slept above it all.

"ENOUGH!" Irene shouted and silence swallowed up the tempest. "Throw him in the cells." She caught an eye through his dark tangled curls. "I'll kill him myself."

“With respect, Admiral,”sniveled a brawler with silver bullets for teeth, “can we not just rip him? He’s a fuckin cheat!”

The fat brawler spat at the man’s feet to second the notion.

“You will not,” Irene ordered. “Anyone who kills him before I give myself the pleasure, or spoils him further can explain their actions to the bullet between their eyes.” She re-cocked the rifle, “Take him downstairs.”

Irene watched five of them drag the prisoner past her from the cages, keeping her eye on them until they vanished down the narrow hole on the other side of the cavern that led down to the cells.

And within minutes, the primal anarchy of the remaining cage animals raged around her once more. Irene ensured her hood was well up, before pushing through the crowd to climb the stairs back up to the main landing above the Pit.

When she reached the stone landing, her ears were still ringing with the chaos of the cages. So loudly, the only way she knew her pulse was racing was because each of her heartbeats was an explosion her bones could barely stand. But the universe granted her no respite.

“Admiral?”

Irene bit her lip to stop herself from gasping. She straitened up, turning her hooded head to face Victor Trevor, her rifle strategically dangling from her fingertips by her thighs. She shot Marley a look, lingering in the shadows behind Trevor.  _Don't move._

“Mr. Trevor,” Irene smiled, her glare shrouded by the hood over her head as she mustered up a Scottish accent. “To what do I owe this earlier than expected pleasure?”

He was a short man, but not short enough for Irene to see his eyes above her hood. But from what she could see, Trevor’s smile didn’t extend beyond the twitch of his lips. “Perhaps, there is somewhere we could speak privately?” he chimed. His accent was strange, a cocktail of all the places he didn’t want you to know he’d been.

Irene sniggered, “If you want privacy, you’ve come to the wrong place.”

He stepped forward. Her hood now shielded most of his face from her view. Irene’s grip on the rifle tightened.

“The cells perhaps?” His chin jerked up. “If you’re running this place in keeping with my family’s tradition, they should be all but empty.”

Irene’s eye twitched under her hood, “as you wish.” She gestured down the ragged stairs she’d just climbed that ducked and winded their way down to the cages. Trevor nodded and beckoned for the two men Irene had mistaken for shadows to follow. As they descended down, Marley joined her at her side.

“This wasn’t part of the plan,” hissed Marley. “He’s armed.”

“So are we,” Irene breathed. “Get yourself out.” Marley nodded at her. “And anyone else worth saving,” Irene added doubtfully, turning away from Marley to follow Trevor. But fingers clamped down on her wrist.

“Tell me you know this will work,” Marley hissed. For a moment Irene’s body was frozen, her head still turned away in the act of leaving. But after a fraction of a second, she turned to face her Lieutenant, wriggling her wrist until her fingers entwined around Marley’s.

“Go,” whispered Irene, giving Marley’s hand the briefest of squeezes before freeing her fingers and following Trevor down into the cavern.

The cells are dark and not with a polite darkness. You know the kind, the kind that seems to pull you to where you’ll find light again. Or the thin and feeble thing that hovers at the edge of a child’s nightlight. No. This was the kind of dark that seethed and twisted and clawed. An endless tormented black only born of the complete absence of anything other than its own company. The kind of darkness that is frightened of light and snuffs it out with a sneer.

Between her own, Trevor’s and his not so merry men’s torches, they could see maybe a meter ahead of wherever they pointed. Irene wasn’t even sure what the cells looked like as a whole, despite sending the wretched down here for the last two months. All she knew was that the ceilings were lower in the cells themselves (to accommodate the foundations) than it was above the path she walked to pass them.

Trevor was right. Traditionally, the cells were empty. “The Admiral” didn’t normally take prisoners, but then, the Admiral didn’t usually have her explosive predispositions.

Irene ran into a wall. It grunted.

“Apologies,” mumbled Trevor’s henchmen. Irene heard his shoes shuffle to her left. She stepped forward, her torchlight glinting off the four leaf clover pinned to Trevor’s suit pocket. Still fingering the rifle, she thought about lifting her hood to get a better look at him. But the risk and the dark made her lower her hand from her head.

“I apologise for visiting ahead of schedule. But given your relatively recent acquisition of this branch, I have come to warn you, Admiral.” Trevor cooed this, as if he believed his information made him king of the world.  “You see, there is a man trying to dismantle my syndicate and he wants me to believe he is doing so single-handedly.” Trevor’s torch light slapped her cheeks. Irene silently thanked herself for leaving up her hood and thanked the darkness pressing in around her.

_Drip._

_Drip._

“How ambitious,” Irene maintained her highland accent, her voice as cool as the water slithering over the stone walls around her. “I doubt he is a problem for me.”

“He might be if the Intel is correct,” he chortled. This was the Syndicate, the largest branch of Jim Moriarty's network. It was never incorrect.

_Drip. Drip. Drip._

Irene nibbled at the bait.

“And the Intel suggests?”

_Drip._

_Drip._

“Admiral,” Trevor’s torchlight wandered away from her, crawling over the serrated stone roof before returning to her hood, “Have you heard the name, Sherlock Holmes?”

_Drip._

 “Jim’s suicidal dancing monkey? He died months ago.” She tossed a chuckle into the dark between their torches. “Don’t tell me you’re afraid of ghosts, Mr Trevor,” she drawled, lowering her voice to a whisper. “Are you afraid of the dark too?” Trevor’s henchmen shifted on either side of her. Irene Adler licked away the smile trembling at her mouth and swallowed back a laugh.

_Drip_

_Drip._

“I highly doubt it was ghosts that helped him destroy my branch in Paris,” Trevor said, his voice level.

Irene chuckled, “that does depend on your definition of ghosts, doesn’t it?” It was a struggle to maintain her accent when every word tied her lungs into knots.

_Drip._

“Yes. But I personally prefer the term ‘rat’” he relished the word with a growl as his henchmen inched closer, boxing her in.  “And when I have a rat problem,” he continued, “I like to see to the extermination of every rat personally,” he paused, “and unpleasantly.”

 She grinned at him, rifle unraised.

_Drip._

“Funny creatures, rats,” Irene mused as Trevor’s torch grew brighter. The glint off the four-leaf clover growing bigger and bigger as it closed in on the beam from her own torchlight. The body heat from the two henchmen at her sides seeped into the leather of her jacket.  “Survivors,” she continued. “And do you know what one of their best survival techniques is?”

The mint on Trevor’s breath permeated the air before her. “Enlighten me,” he said.

She flashed her teeth in his torchlight, “They’re _not_ scared in the dark.”

Quick as the light this place would never see, Irene knocked the torch from Trevor’s hands and shoved the light of her own in his eyes. He screamed and hurled himself back, the torch clattering and extinguishing against the stone.

Grunting, the two henchmen at her sides snatched at her, their large hands fumbling for her in the black and dropping their own torches in the dark disarray. Irene twisted away from them, but the hood of her jacket was falling. Dropping the rifle, her hand flew up to grab it. But it threw her off balance just as the heel of her boot caught on the uneven stone.

The fall seemed amplified, as if the darkness had pushed her over like a petulant child. Irene shoved out an arm to break her fall-

A forearm wrapped around her hips, pushing her back upright. “I’ve got you,” he breathed.  “Put these on.” He shoved what could only be goggles into her hands. Irene straitened up and pulled the goggles over her ponytail.

The world was a splatter of green and shadow. Trevor and his men, mere smudges stumbling over each other through black swirls while a shirtless and bleeding Sherlock Holmes stood in all his green skeletal glory by her side.

“Did you set the charges?” She signed the words to him, keeping the corner of her eye on Trevor only 4 feet from them. Sherlock nodded.

Irene’s hands scrambled, _“What are we waiting for?!”_

Trevor’s torch blinded her night vision, “THERE!” 

Sherlock almost wrenched her wrist from her arm as Irene shoved him toward the stairs. Grunting with pain, Sherlock half dragged her along behind him, his sprint more powerful even with the gunshot wound as they threw themselves up the ragtag staircase, shoulders bashing against the narrow walls. Their heads ducked simultaneously with the steep incline.

“Now?!” he shouted.

“NOW!” she yelled.

 Irene pressed the remote detonator taped to the inside of her jacket just as Sherlock smashed the glass alarm with Irene’s fallen rifle as the button reeled past them. It was all just splashes of green blur through her goggles.

The rumble of the explosion drowned in the shriek of the alarm and there was a deafening _CRACK_.

The ground shook. The walls shook. The very air around them howled with the strain of keeping this underworld stable. _It’s not going to last._

“HOW DEEP DID YOU SET THEM?!” she panted, feeling as if she was burning her lungs to keep moving.

“KEEP RUNNING!” Sherlock shouted back, his grip on her wrist painful as they reached the top of the narrow stairs. Irene could see the cages-

“OH, NO YOU DON’T-!”

Her leg vanished out from under her. Sherlock yelped, his bleeding shoulder crunching sickeningly as he was pulled backward with her and Irene’s chin crashed into the rock. Skull vibrating, she twisted around to see Victor Trevor’s fist yanking her leg towards him.

Kicking out with her free leg, she tried to roll over-

“NO! DON’T LET HIM SEE YOUR FACE!”

Sherlock’s fingers finally left her wrist. There was another crack against stone, a screech and the rifle fell beside Irene’s head where she was pressed face down on the earth. Snatching it up just as her leg came free, she scrambled to her feet and whipped around to face the narrow staircase. Sherlock was bent double while Victor Trevor stood over him, wiping the blood from his broken nose.

Irene launched herself at Trevor, bringing the rifle down onto his smirking face. The thud bounced down the rocks just like Trevor’s body as he fell back down the stairs into the arms of his dazed henchmen.

She was breathing so hard her bones felt flimsy under skin. “Sherlock?” she panted, wiping sweat and paint from her lip and leaning down so their heads were level. Her stomach felt so knotted, it punched in her throat. “How long did you set those charges for?”

Groaning, Sherlock forced himself upright. Their faces inches from each other in the tunnel when he eventually straightened. “10 minutes,” he gasped, heaving himself forward off the wall. His shoulder wobbled dangerously away from his arm with the movement. “Let’s move!”

She hadn’t realized she’d laid her hand on his uninjured arm until it was no longer beneath her fingers. Breaking into a run, he somehow _still_ managed to stay ahead of her as they threw themselves into the storming sea of forgotten criminals.

It was a war.

Irene was thrown, punched, kicked - Every person was a hurricane raging and fighting to get to the stairs as the alarm screamed hell down at them all. Irene could just make out Sherlock’s tangle of hair. Using the rifle, she pushed her way through, ribs cracking under her elbows as she avoided the blind jabs of the -

“HEY!”

A fist collided with her eyes.

****

****

****

**_“SHERLOCK!”_ **

His eyes snapped open to meet Mrs. Hudson’s crinkled ones before she brandished her phone between them.

“It’s Molly, dear,” she huffed, straightening up, “on the phone, been trying to rouse you for ages. Have you even eaten breakfast, or have you just been… mediating?”

Blinking profusely in the pale light pouring from his living room windows, Sherlock Holmes snatched the phone from her and waved her away, doing his best not to react to the news that it was morning already. He was cold and his knees were splintered driftwood beneath him, but he dared not uncross them in front of Mrs. Hudson.

“Yes?” he cleared his throat, pressing the phone to his ear as Mrs. Hudson scurried back through his apartment door.

“Uh- Sherlock? I need you to come into work. Can you come?” The sentence was framed like a question, but it didn’t sound like a request. Sherlock’s teeth dug further into his tongue at the tremor punctuating each one of Molly Hooper’s words. He checked his watch, realizing with a shiver that it was the only thing adorning the upper half of his body.

7:30am.

Sherlock almost slipped on the photographs of Edinburgh’s streets sprawled around him as he threw himself to his feet, though he was careful not to trample the withered white rose in front of his knees.

“On my way.”

“Thank you,” Molly squeaked, she might as well have sung the words into the phone. Sherlock hit the end call button, wincing as he failed to ignore the nerves throwing tantrums in his thighs for moving.

“Mrs. Hudson!”

Of course, she had been lurking on the landing just outside his apartment door.

“Is Molly alright, dear?” she asked, poking her head inside the green doorframe of his apartment. Sherlock said nothing, shoving her phone back into her hands as he passed her on the way to 221b’s bathroom. She made a tutting sound and sniffed the air, “When was the last time this place was cleaned up, Sherlock?”

“I don’t know. When did the last tenant move out?” he muttered, reaching the sanctuary of his bathroom.

“Should I ring John?” She called after him.

“He’s staging an intervention for Harry!” Sherlock shouted back, closing the bathroom door halfway as he plucked a shirt from the floor. The scar on his shoulder winked at him in his cracked vanity mirror as he began to pull the light blue shirt over his arms. Meanwhile, the cool green tiles battled against the pins and needles pelting the muscles of his feet. “If he and Mary are doing that properly, they’ll have their phones off!” he finished.

“I’ll text him then. Just in case he’s worried about Molly.”

Sherlock gritted his teeth. As if it wasn’t irritating enough John denied putting him under Mrs. Hudson’s keen surveillance, he also had to put up with Mrs. Hudson’s pitiful attempts at covering it up. Leaning on the sink and dragging a hand down his cheeks, he rolled his eyes downward.

Two cigarette butts glared back at him in their singed and faded orange glory, crumpled against the cracked paint of the sink rim.

His heart skipped. Sherlock glanced in the direction of Mrs. Hudson’s voice.

_Nothing._

Fingers sprinting down the last few buttons of his shirt and stuffing the cigarette butts down the drain, Sherlock scrubbed the sink with hand soap until his hands burned and he induced a sneezing fit from the sanitizer assaulting his nostrils.

“Sherlock?”

He froze in the act of wrapping his fingers around the tap.

“Do you have a cold, dear?” Her voice was closer.

Splashing his face with water, Sherlock prayed his eyes weren’t as bloodshot as they looked in the brief glimpse of his reflection he allowed himself. The cold water stung his cheeks, but with a squeak, he twisted the tap off and flung himself out of the bathroom just as he heard the flutter of Mrs. Hudson’s slippers on 221b’s floorboards.

Mrs. Hudson jumped at his sudden appearance, her beady brown eyes dashing over him. Her lips pressed together into a line.

“You really don’t look well, Sherlock. Jim Moriarty may be back but that doesn’t mean you can’t eat some breakfast. It has all been a bit quieter lately.”

Sherlock groaned. “You’re right. I’ll just call Molly and tell her that her urgency is noted, but I had to stop for toast,” he stated, rolling his eyes. He raised a finger at her. “Don’t nose around my apartment while I’m gone,” he added, pushing past her and grabbing his coat off the back of John’s chair. “And _don’t_ call John!” he called over his shoulder, before grabbing his shoes and taking the steps two at a time to Baker Street’s cab rank.

 

***

“I’ve got to go, Sergeant!” Greg Lestrade resisted the temptation to slam his foot down.

“We have actual call-ins, Greg! Real-time crimes that need attention!” Sally replied. She actually put her foot down.

“You know it’s been flat lately and in any case, I doubt Molly Hooper would call me 8 times and you half a dozen for a _fake_ crime, Sergeant,” Greg snapped back. Sally’s jaw tightened. They were striding through the underground carpark of Scotland Yard, their shouts ricocheting off the empty cars as they rushed. Greg stopped at his own silver police car, almost spilling his coffee on the hood as he fumbled for his keys.

“What did she say was wrong?”  Sally sighed, glaring at him from the edge of his vision.

“Said she wouldn’t say over the phone-” Greg muttered, glowering down at himself. He didn’t have time for this. Groaning, he plunged his hands into his pockets to no avail. “For God’s sake, where are those keys!”

The car locks clicked with a beep and Greg lifted his head to see Sergeant Donovan lowering herself into the passenger seat. Grabbing his coffee off the roof, he opened the door and slid into the driver’s seat alongside her. No sooner had he shut the door behind him, Sally tossed him the keys and folded her arms. Her look was so expectant, it was a wonder her eyebrows didn’t vanish into her hairline.

“Thank you, Sergeant,” Greg mumbled, leaning forward to sit his coffee in the cup holder. “Look, you don’t have to back me up on this. The commissioner is looking for an excuse to fire me.”

Sally’s eyes almost rolled away from her face as she rounded on him, “Which is exactly why you’re going to need a decent officer to vouge for you when he brings you in for this.” Greg raised an eyebrow at her. “Boss,” she added, folding her arms and staring determinedly out the windshield. Greg’s eyes narrowed at her.

“This has nothing to do with Moriarty being back and you feeling regretful about framing Sherlock, does it, Sergeant?”  

She scowled at him, “I don’t have regrets about doing my job. Didn’t you say it was urgent?”  But she avoided his eyes as he started the car and headed to St. Bart’s Hospital.

***

 

“Lost someone has ya, mate?”

Half the cab woman’s face smiled kindly at Sherlock in the rear mirror. Blinking and shaking his head as he opened his eyes, Sherlock straightened his back against the seat of the cab.

“What?”

The driver shrugged, “you kept muttering…” she trailed off.

Sherlock frowned, pulling his eyes away from the woman’s. “Thank you,” he muttered curtly, forcing his gaze to the window.

Feeble sunrays trickled over London’s colourful jungle as the cab crawled through its veins. It hadn’t rained for the last 24 hours and Sherlock thought the city looked dull without its trademark shine. One of the many attractions that lured him to London was its’ perpetually damp surfaces. Every one of them a mirror of an imperfect reflection. That was always the catch, of course. A reflection, no matter how imperfect, is never a complete lie.

St. Bart’s Hospital eventually loomed overhead, the grey towering reward behind a sharp left turn. Sherlock was already out the door before the cab had come to a complete stop, tossing 10 quid into the front, closing the door behind him and burying his hands in his pockets.

It was 8:02 am. April. 2016.

Sherlock stood for a moment, closing his eyes, letting the icy breeze brushing his cheeks sink into his brain. It was a far gentler lifeline to reality than caffeine.

_How many hours had he been awake?_

_How long had John and Mary been gone? Were they safe?_

_Was Moriarty alive? Why had Molly called so early?_

_Why couldn’t he remem -?_

 

At least the answer to one of these questions presented itself as Sherlock made his way through St. Bart’s glass doors.

“Sherlock!”

Molly Hooper bounded toward him across the somewhat empty foyer. His eyes swept over her. Her hair was tied up unevenly. No doubt she’d tugged it out and had to re-do it without a mirror more than once. Meanwhile, her fingers danced around one another so fast Sherlock had to look away for fear he would get motion sickness. But she had no visible injuries.

Frowning, Sherlock’s ears prickled towards the police sirens wailing closer and closer outside.

_Crime scene?_

“Where-” Sherlock started. But she shook her head and shuffled toward him.

“It’s easier to just show you,” her voice was barely above a whisper. But the only other bodies occupying the foyer were half a dozen puffy eyed paramedics, yawning into their coffees.

Sherlock took a step closer to her and lowered his voice as a gaggle of security officers walked past, “Can you show me before the police get here?”

Molly nodded up at him, “Why do you think I called you first?”

And with a quick glance over his shoulder, Molly shuffled towards the elevators with Sherlock falling into step beside her.

***

“That was one of the wardens at Bart’s,” Sally hung up the phone, “said we’ll need the forensic team.”

“Well, call them in then!” Greg groaned, punching the steering wheel of the car. “Bloody traffic,” he muttered. From the corner of his eye, Greg saw Sally’s eye brows stiffen.

“What is it, Sargent?”

“You gonna call in the freak?” It seemed an effort for her not to snarl the question.

Greg rolled his eyes, “Just call Anderson, Donovan.”

 

 

 

**_Noise._ **

**_Pain._ **

**_Noise._ **

**_Pain._ **

**_Was the ringing in her ears the alarm? The concussion?_ **

**_Was she on the ground? Was that a boot kicking her lungs, or her own heartbeat?_ **

_Was she upright? Was she awake? Was the swirl of colors, the inside of her eyelids, or the aftermath of a fist? Was there an aftermath?_

Is this it?

Is that all?

There was metal in her mouth.

Irene clutched at the taste like a cliff edge. _Blood._ Bleeding, not dying. The alarm untangled itself from the ringing in her ear drums and she realised she wasn’t on the ground. The crowd was so thick, there was no room for falling. Her hood had long left her head. As she opened her eyes, she was tossed, tugged, pulled pushed like dead leaf in a blizzard, but she was still breathing. In fact, almost surreally, the crowd had carried her to the edge of the cavern. Right below the stairs that lead to her way out. The Admiral’s private exit. In anyone else’s case? A bolted shut dead end. Her heart contracted and she turned on the crowd.

“SHERLOCK!” she shouted, his name burning the walls of her lungs.

_Idiot._

But she didn’t have the time to reprimand herself. Her brief vacation from consciousness meant she’d lost track of the bomb timer and he had said 10 minutes. Irene threw herself up the stairs, half screaming passwords at the henchmen beyond the bolted bars in her path. Irene yelled at them to get out, hurtling upward in their wake. Finally, the steps twisted into a spiral. Sprinting against the clock, her knees were on fire with each stride before she crashed through the faded green door and back into the alleyway. The cold night air hit her face like a miracle. She almost wanted to drink it down.

“COME ON!” Sherlock shouted. Hunched double on the seat of her bike, his eyes glistened in the pre-dawn night as he threw the keys at her. But Irene had already thrown herself across the seat, her fingers catching the keys mid arch. Within seconds she was revving the engine. The pair of them jolted forward as the wheels skidded against the cobblestones before the bike sprung from the alley.

“You stole my-!” she started.

“WATCH THE-”

Irene swerved, the front of the bike narrowly missing the front the tow truck.

“LET ME DRIVE!” she shouted over her shoulder. The wind whipped her hair off her face as it roared in her ears and her skin bristled with the blood and sweat drying on her forehead. But that was little consolation without a helmet to keep her eyes from watering. Her night vision goggles were long lost in the secret wasteland (hopefully crumbling) below the wheels spinning by her boots. Somewhere behind her she heard multiple engines. St Giles’ cathedral whipped past them, a blur of clawed turrets and spirals slashing at the night sky.

“Do we have company?” Irene veered into Edinburgh’s Royale Mile before taking another right.

“Keep to the narrow streets- easier to lose them!” Sherlock bellowed in her ear as the bike screeched downtown. Irene gritted her teeth as Edinburgh’s squished cobblestoned architecture squeezed the bike into corners and down alleyways. But it was no good. Trevor and his men knew these streets with vicious familiarity.

And it clicked.

“Hold on!” she shouted back at him. Irene dug her heel into the accelerator. Sherlock, always so careful even at high speeds not to grip her too tight, threw his arms around her waist as the engine roared, lurching them forward. The wind was thunder in her ear drums, but not loud enough to cover the unmistakable _snick_ of a bullet clipping her ear.

“Please, don’t repeat Paris!” His words vibrated against her head and she was glad he couldn’t see her grin. More bullets sailed past them. Irene couldn’t catch Sherlock’s words between dodging them all, but she had no doubt he was swearing. The wheels of the bike screamed, burnt rubber filled her nostrils and she rammed the bike around a corner.

Lamp posts blinked out one by one as dawn simmered purple in the clouds overhead. Almost a dozen twists and turns later, their pursuers were off their tail and, at the bottom of Victoria Street Irene spotted her target.

 “THIS IS GOING TO HURT!” she yelled over the wind, over the engine, over her banging pulse. Irene let go of the handles of the bike and clapped her arms down over Sherlock’s bare ones around her hips. She jammed the pedal-

“DON’T!”

Too late. Throwing all her weight sideways, Irene sent them both flying backward as the bike exploded into the lamppost at the edge of the street’s end.

For a briefly infinite moment, Sherlock’s body pressing against hers was the only solid thing in existence as they soared towards the ground, her stomach plunging into her legs.

Irene’s body crunched against the cobblestones just as the bike shattered into flames ahead of them.

Rolling like ragdolls away from the heat, Irene was thankful for the leather of jacket shielding her from the heat of the flames as she twisted, groaning, onto her back. Black spots punctuated her vision. Her ragged breathing strained in her lungs and her ears were ringing so loud that her brain stung numb in her skull.

Gingerly, she sat up and wriggled her toes inside her boots. It wasn’t that her shoulder hurt, or her knees hurt, it was that every atom she was composed of in this blip of existence screamed in protest that she was alive.

But adrenaline kicked a laugh to her lips as a torrent of sleepy-eyed witnesses clambered down from their apartments and the jet black Fords that had swerved into the street reversed back down, skidding back into the dark.

Irene giggled. “See?” she panted, gesturing at the now a flaming puddle of metal 10 feet in front of them, “Nowhere near as bad as Paris.”

But the laughter died on her lips when her eyes found Sherlock, crumpled up and motionless beside her.

 

 

 

 

**_The morgue never smelled how one expected it to._ **

_At least not this early. Mornings in morgues were unpredictable, contradictory, busy things, as the bodies of those who were certainly not going to wake up in the morning were wheeled in one after the other. Each of them needing a tag and bag. Morgues were places that bustled with death and this was the reason Molly Hooper adored her job. Usually, the dead could not trick you, or threaten you. There was complete honesty in cadavers, one just needed the skill to look._

But before Sherlock could push open the door to the morgue, Molly stuck her arm out to stop him. Sherlock followed it up to her face, brow creased beneath his curls as he looked down at her.

“Just so you know, I didn’t touch them,” she said, swallowing. “They’re exactly how I found them.” She took a deep breath, “I think it’s better you see them- before Greg gets here.”

The lines between Sherlock’s brows deepened as his lips disappeared into a line. But he nodded and Molly took away her arm. Pushing the doors open, she followed him inside.

The sight wasn’t any easier to look at the second time around.

Two bodies. Male and female. Their eyes and mouth stitched shut with red thread. But you couldn’t really tell it was red at first because they were painted, every inch of them, in fresh blood.

However, Molly Hooper hadn’t called Sherlock Holmes into the morgue for a couple of bloodstained cadavers on slabs. She had called him because they weren’t on slabs.

The slabs had all been wheeled up against the wall thanks to the cleaners. The bodies were on the floor, laying hand in hand on their backsides. The blood they’d been painted with pooling in puddles all around them as they slept a wakeless sleep.

Molly chanced a sideways look at Sherlock. He was still. Too still. With a fist balled. The eager curiosity he so often displayed in the past, with his head, cocked to the side and a spring in his step seemed like another person because it couldn’t be this one, pale and burning.

“Is it him?” Molly whispered, edging closer to Sherlock’s side, “Jim?”

Sherlock sucked a breath in through his nose as if he’d only just remembered to breathe when she spoke. He gulped.

“No. Smell that?”

Molly shook her head at him.

“Exactly,” he muttered. Walking on tiptoe, Sherlock stepped over the dead woman and crouched between where their hands were intertwined.

“Sherlock-” Molly chucked him a pair of plastic gloves from her pocket. As he snapped them on, she walked around to crouch at the shaved heads of the bodies and frowned.

There was something wrong with their heads. Not just that they were freshly shaved. It was the shape of them. No ordinary skull was shaped like that. Too flat. Too square. Too hollow.

“There’s something in their heads,” she looked over the dead torsos at him.

“There’s something-” he mumbled, curls rustling as he bent down further, “there’s something in their hands.”

Molly pursed her lips at the squelch and click that snapped the air as Sherlock prized their hands apart with a pen he’d pulled from his pocket. It was surprising how stiff bodies went when blood no longer ran through them. A minute of grunting through clenched teeth later and-

“Got you,” Sherlock ran his tongue over his lips triumphantly as he jiggled the object free from the dead couple’s hands. Whatever it was, it was small. He stood up, tossing it from one hand to the other before flipping it over to look at its other side.

And the color plummeted from his cheeks.

It was something square and covered in… dirt? Dried blood? From this distance, Molly couldn’t really see through Sherlock’s fingers.

All she could see was the way Sherlock’s eyes seemed to choke at the sight of it. Like he was watching a nightmare he’d forgotten about. Frozen again, no sound came from him, but Molly could feel every inch of his insides screaming like a terrible pulse over them and the dead. She straightened up and took a small step towards him.

“Sherlock?”

Nothing. But his hand trembled as if the object weighed the world in his palm. Molly walked around the bodies to look over his shoulder and the faintest of gasps broke the silence.

The object was a phone she had seen only once before. In this very hospital, Sherlock had been X-Raying it and she had later heard from John that the phone was not his.

The phone belonged to Irene Adler. And scratched into the cracked screen with something sharp like the tip of a knife were the words,

_I TOLD YOU_

Molly, bewildered, tossed her stare between the phone and Sherlock’s stricken gaze. “Isn’t that-?” Molly started.

“Come on, Donovon!”

The pair of them jumped. Quick as a flash, Sherlock shoved the phone into his chest pocket beneath his coat. It was only then Molly noticed the scratches on his knuckles. The bruises. Her eyes jumped to his still pale face.

“Sher-?”

“Not a word, Molly.” He crouched back down and re-tangled the couple’s fingers.

“But-”

His eyes fixed on hers. They were shining. “Please?”

Molly almost took a step back. _Was he begging?_ Pursing her lips, she held his pale eyes with hers for a long moment before she nodded. Sherlock only just managing to scramble to his feet and pocket the gloves from his fingers as Greg Lestrade and Sally Donovan entered the morgue. Their jaws dropped.

 

Within an hour, the forensics team were crawling all over the place. They set the bodies up across two tables where they glowed red beneath harsh florescent, an astounding bit of logic displayed by Anderson who naturally expected everyone to praise him for it. Lestrade and Sally Donovan were talking to the janitor whose shift it had been that night. But there would be no witnesses. The phone weighed heavy in Sherlock’s pocket and he kept his head bent to avoid Molly’s eye

“Greg?” Piped up Molly. Lestrade thanked the supposed witness he’d been questioning and moved to stand at Molly’s side. She was hovering at the cadaver’s heads with Sherlock, adjacent to her, trailing his magnifying glass over the splatter pattern of the blood now drying on the bodies.

“What’s wrong with their heads?” Greg asked, biting his lip. “Why are they shaped like that? All flat?”

Molly shrugged. “Is it okay if I…?” She indicated the scalping knife between her gloved fingers.

Lestrade shot him a look, “Sherlock?”

Straightening up, Sherlock scraped some blood off with a cotton tip and swapped his magnifying glass for an evidence pouch from his pocket. “Go ahead, Molly,” he said.

The look in her eyes added to the weight in his chest for a brief moment before she moved her focus to the corpses. Readjusting the scalping knife in her fingers, it glinted in the overhead light before she wedged it into the top of the male’s forehead and sliced.

The slightly uncomfortable thing about cutting dead flesh was that it was quiet. Only the living screamed.

No fluids bubbled weakly through the incision as Molly, tongue between her teeth, cut through the rest of his face and opened it up to the light. Donovan and Anderson, who had been skulking at the end of the combined slabs, walked around to frown over their shoulders at the opened head.

In the absence of a skull, there was a box. A square shaped box that looked, in the harsh light, like it was made by a blind man from memory. It had a mangled mass at the front of it to fill out the nose of the head and, despite its dull glint in the bright light, it was not transparent.

“You mind?” Molly asked Lestrade. But Sherlock had already reached his hand forward.

The inside of the head was clean. No brain, or flesh matter, or bone. Halfway to taxidermy. The box itself came free with surprising ease because, Sherlock realized, it was not a box. It was a dark green sack. Only slightly bigger than his hand, it felt…lumpy between his fingers. Sherlock held out a hand to Molly and she handed him the scalping knife.

Bringing the sack up to the light, Sherlock leaned his head and down and adjusted the knife between the thumb and index finger of his other gloved hand.

Everyone recoiled at the smell as the knife tore an opening in the dark green bag. Maimed flesh and fur prickled Sherlock’s knuckles and, as the knife finished cutting through it, the pouch’s contents fell in mutilated pieces at Sherlock’s feet. Everyone jerked away from him, blocking their noises.

Rat.

The pouch had been full the fresh rotting chunks of a quartered rat. The inside of the pouch contained nothing else.

Nothing but an embossed four leaf clover.

_I TOLD YOU_

Sherlock hadn’t eaten since he wasn’t sure how long, he was more than sure his stomach was empty. But as Irene Adler’s phone burned a hole in his chest and his eyes swept over the blood-soaked bodies lying hand in hand on the table beside him, his insides turned to lead, the weight of them threatening to pull him down to the center of the earth.

But holding him to this hell above ground were a handful of words, a poisonous echo, clawing their way from the trapped depths of his memory.

_“And when I have a rat problem…”_

He held his breath to trap his screaming insides because something told him this wasn’t a crime scene. This wasn’t a homicide case.

This was a preview.

 

***

The winding grey tunnels of subterranean London are the most paradoxical secrets of the modern world. The vermin crawling over the city’s historical surface assume that London’s underground is, well, just the underground, and that the city’s underworld consists only of great wars in glass boxes and toy trains bursting with monkeys in ties. You can’t blame terrorists for attacking them, really. It’s hardly much of a challenge when the majority of the population don’t even know what lies beneath the heels of their brogues.

Leaning his head back against the cool curve of the concrete wall, Sebastian Moran listened to the crunch as he crushed a rat beneath his boot. The match he drew from his pocket sparked the dim air of the tunnel. Cigarettes taste better in the dark, he thought as his breath dragged the smoke into his lungs. Maybe because in shadow, they’re a source of light.

 Footsteps assaulted the quiet and Sebastian doused the cigarette on the top of his palm as the outline of his employer occupied the darkness in front of him. The smell of burning flesh and dried blood filled his nostrils.

            “Is it done?”

Sebastian Moran nodded at his employer, “I still don’t understand why we’re helping Holmes. It’s not exactly our usual M.O. is it?”

“How sweet of you to say ‘our’ as if you have a say, Moran.”

Moran tried not to raise his voice, but his snark still echoed brutally off the walls of the tunnel as they started to walk, “Why are we helping him?”

“Because,” Irene Adler replied, “It's about time Sherlock Holmes found me before Victor Trevor finally does.”


	2. The Puppet Masters

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Irene Adler's phone is missing from the St Bart's crime scene, but if there were two people in the known universe that could be caught tampering with a crime scene and not be charged with obstruction, its Sherlock Holmes and Molly Hooper. This theory becomes difficult to prove flawlessly, however, when Sally Donovan starts digging into Molly's dating history and Sally can't help but wonder: if Jim Moriarty lived all this time, why did Sherlock disappear for two years?

_**Present Day** _

The chilled streets of London are bustling inconvenient things when you are tearing down them in pursuit of consulting detectives. Tripping over other people’s shoes and ignoring the disgruntled ‘oi’s’, Molly Hooper hurled herself down Baker Street before, panting, she threw herself up 221b’s stairs after Sherlock Holmes.

“Sherlock?! You can’t just run from a scene like-”

_BANG!_

Almost knocking the door off its hinges, he disappeared, whirling into his apartment. By the time Molly reached the doorway, he was throwing the contents of his desk drawers onto the floor. A gun, a shrunken head, pens, paper and 3 broken watches flooded from the drawer to boom and clatter against the floorboards. Yanking them out one by one, Sherlock swore under his breath at each item before hurling the drawer itself onto the floor. The dust kicked up a fuss in the grey light from the windows, littering the air with freckles.

“It was here, it was here, it was here- I know it was- I remember-” Sherlock was muttering, dragging his knuckles through his greasy curls before balling them into fists. White tainted the bruising of his knuckles for a moment, but Molly’s heart launched back from her ribs as he brought them both down onto the table. Gritting his teeth, he jerked out the last drawer and threw it to the ground. Molly took a step towards him.

Sherlock’s hand flew at her, “NO!”

Her body froze.

“Don’t step on that-!”

Molly, frowning, looked down at her shoes. A withered rose was nestled between her leather flats. It was a near miracle she hadn’t trampled it, really. Shooting a glance at Sherlock with his hands still sprinting frantically through his belongings, Molly leant down and picked up the rose.

There was no scent. Its tired petals, the ghostlike memory of its once doubtless red vigor, felt flat and feeble between Molly’s fingers.

He’d pressed it between the pages of a book.

Molly bit down on the inside of her cheek.

 _Who gave it to him? A client?_ It couldn’t be the same rose that had been sitting beside Sherlock’s hospital bed all those months ago, the one with the mysterious card. He wasn’t that sentimental about anything…or, anyone.

Another bang and Sherlock’s frustrated “naUGHG” jolted her from her thoughts as Sherlock withdrew his foot from a kick.

“MRS HUDSON!”

Within seconds Mrs. Hudson appeared on the landing, her hands on her yellow aproned hips, chin crinkled beneath pursed lips, “Why are you trashing your home, Sherl-?” she started.

“Who’s been here?” he cut across her, shoving Molly aside to stand before Mrs. Hudson in the living room. His desperate eyes glared down his nose at her.

Mrs. Hudson made a pfft noise as she stepped forward, arms folded, “You’re the only who lives here, dear.” She said, “Why? What’s happened?”

Sherlock groaned at her, “There was a phone in my desk drawer. Was anyone near my drawers while I’ve been away?”

Mrs. Hudson’s purple earrings wiggled as she shook her head, “No one comes here when you’re gone, darling. You live alone.”

“If only,” Sherlock scowled. He turned away from Mrs Hudson. Crouching down, he began to gather up his strewn desk drawer contents. Sweeping them up into one arm, he dropped them on his desk, keeping his eyes cast to the cluttered floor. Mrs Hudson bit her lip before catching Molly’s eye.

“Oh, that’s pretty Molly, dear.” Mrs. Hudson nodded at the pressed rose in Molly’s hands.

“Oh, it’s not-”

“Give it to me,” Sherlock said, almost snatching it out of her fingers and laying it on top of the map of Edinburgh topping the now foot high pile of papers on his desk, still keeping his eyes far from Molly’s.

“What’s all this, Sherlock?” Mrs. Hudson gestured at his desk with hot pink fingernails. But Sherlock rounded on her.

“Mrs Hudson-” his voice was strained, “while I was away did anyone come in here?” Sherlock licked his lips, squeezing his eyes shut as if he was trying to stop his next words stampeding off his lips. No. It wasn’t that. It was almost like…the words wanted to, but got caught in the back of his throat “Did-?” he swallowed, “Did a woman come here?”

“A woman?” Molly and Mrs. Hudson repeated.

“You mean a client?” Mrs. Hudson prodded. Sherlock’s teeth burrowed into his lip before answering, as if to trap his words in the prison of his mouth.

“Just a woman. Did a woman- or a man with a 4 leaf clover on his person, come here asking for me at any point when I have vacated this apartment?”

Shifting on her toes, Mrs Hudson folded her arms over her faded yellow apron once more, her wrinkles deepening as she surveyed Sherlock. “No one, dear. You’ve hardly had any clients for months.” Sherlock’s lips vanished at her answer. “I promise,” she added, her voice as gentle as the step she took toward him. But Sherlock turned away from them toward his desk.

The dust floated in lazy loops above his greasy curls. The sun, well hidden behind London’s standard overcast sky, was still not dull enough to make his sullen frame unimpressive. Yes, impressive. But not in the way he used to be, like a soldier eager for the battle. His body was so still, yet from where Molly stood she could just follow his fingertips brushing the withered rose’s stalk. Molly wasn’t sure why, but she wanted to avert her gaze, as if she’d walked in on some kind of private moment where the only thing that existed was Sherlock and his almost entirely withered rose.

A few minutes passed this way. Then, Mrs. Hudson sighed, shot Molly a wide-eyed frown, shrugged and headed back downstairs. When the last of her fluffy slippered footfall vanished behind the clink of her own apartment door, Molly dared to disturb the silence.

“Sherlock, that phone-” pausing, Molly’s ears prickled towards the sirens floating up from the street below. Sherlock stiffened, retracting his fingers from the rose.  She lowered her voice to a whisper, “Sherlock, that phone, why take it?”

Nothing.

Molly took a deep breath, “You can tell me, or I tell Greg you took it.”

The threat was clumsy, stumbling off her lips like a 3am drunk seeking their long-lost balance, but the words hung no less resolute in the air before her and his turned back. “I want to know why I walked into work and saw those bodies, Sherlock, and if that phone is the key to finding out-” she swallowed, “you won’t keep me in the dark- Not this time.” She took a step toward him. “You can’t expect me to keep keeping your secrets without giving me a reason to.”

He didn’t even flinch.

Molly heaved a sigh from her lungs, turning on her heel towards the door.

“Don’t,”

Molly froze in the act of wrapping her fingers around the door knob. She threw a glance over her shoulder in time to see him turning around to face her, caressing the battered blackberry in the palm of his right hand as if he was scared it would break. It was then she realised his hands were still gloved from the crime scene. As he inhaled, Molly watched his fingers wrap around the phone. The act almost seemed protective. And when he spoke his eyes never left it. As if it was the phone that had requested his confession, rather than her.

“I didn’t steal it,” his voice was low and absent of any trace of his usual bravado. Molly dropped her arm away from the door to face him. “I stole it back,” he finished.

But before Molly’s brow had even finished furrowing, Sally Donovan’s voice made her jump.

“I can’t believe you made incriminating yourself even easier, freak.”

And Molly wheeled around just in time to see Greg Lestrade’s morose expression on the heels of Sally’s triumphant one.

 

 

 

_** 2011 ** _

**_“You’re screwed!”_ **

**_“I didn’t have much choice!” Irene hissed._ **

**_“There is no way Trevor will trust me now, get that? Also, there’s a bike fuelled bonfire on my doorstep! Which is super subtle by the way-”_ **

**_Irene groaned, “Shut up, Marley!”_ **

 Simultaneously maintaining her temper and balance whilst keeping Sherlock Holmes’ unconscious form upright was an operation Irene Adler christened far too delicate for the wee hours between chaos and dawn. Especially with her bones still ringing from the crash that had caused the aforementioned bike fuelled bonfire.

But to Irene’s relief, Marley heeded her request, the pair of them gasping as they lowered Sherlock haphazardly onto Marley’s faded green suede lounge.

His body rolled forward almost instantly and it was a few more minutes of rearranging bloody limbs and fluffing cushions before he was resting in something that could be considered comfortable for human beings. Irene stepped back to admire her handiwork, raising her knuckles to rub the paint from her eyes, before placing her hands on her hips.

The bruising on his torso was spectacular, a purple and black tempest blanketing his bent ribs. His shadowy curls slicked to his face with sweat and dirt. Blood, in various stages of drying, hid his pale skin without order and Irene severely doubted it was all his. In a way, she was glad of it. He was completely unrecognisable. But that didn’t prevent her stomach from twisting so she felt knots down to her toes.

A finger snapped at the bridge of her nose, “Ground control to Irene Adler!”

Irene blinked, hitting Marley’s hand away, “For God’s sake, keep your voice down.”

“We can debate about bedside manner when there isn’t a hobo staining my couch with his bodily fluids!”

Irene dragged a hand down her face, black paint flaking off on her sweaty fingers, “Your couch is already stained and he isn’t one of them, Marley. Get me some tweezers and a towel.”

Marley’s bottom lip quivered mutinously, “Why?”

“Because I left a bullet in his arm and we might need it later,” Irene snapped. Huffing, Marley walked around her only other arm chair to the splattering of lilac cupboards set into the far wall above the sink that served as an excuse for kitchen. A minute later and Irene was crouched beside the sofa with Sherlock’s arm resting in her hands as sweat dried on her lips. Irene sucked some air into her burning lungs before wiping her sticky palms on her jeans. Marley shoved the tweezers in front of her cheeks. Irene snatched the tweezers from her grip.

“Tear it up,” she muttered, nodding at the towel in Marley’s other hand. The metal of the tweezers vibrated with her pulse as it bounded through her veins and Irene trapped her breath between her teeth, ears searching for Sherlock’s breaths between Marley’s jagged ripping of the towel.

_Come on-_

_Come on-_

_Come on-_

His chest rose feebly. Irene bit down on her tongue, keeping the premature grin in her throat before she set to work on the bullet burrowed in the mangled remains of his arm.

For the minutes that followed, the unpleasant protests of flesh crackled and squelched soullessly at the quiet as Irene disentangled the bullet from Sherlock’s shoulder. He didn’t even wake when she finally tugged it free.

Minutes later the stench of whiskey clung to the air as Marley wrapped the shreds of the towel around his shoulder. Irene threw the tweezers down onto the splintered green coffee table behind her, raising a shaking hand to wipe her lips as she stood up beside Marley.

“Who is he?” Marley asked, wasting no time.

Irene pushed passed her, kicking a rusted _Open 7 days: By appointment only,_ sign out of her path on the way to Marley’s bathroom.

 Like the rest of her above shop apartment, snug was a word far too kind for it. Not a single one of the faded green tiles was there in its entirety. The only light source other than the solitary globe that dangled, buzzing, from the mould ridden ceiling was the little of the dawn that defied the grime through the small window above the toilet.

There was so little room that there would be no such thing as personal space with two people standing at the vanity, a quality of Marley’s bathroom Irene had found rather romantic once upon a time.

 _God, It is strange how some places hold memories, isn’t it?_ Like a hostage, imprisoning them. And if you find yourself where you once were, it is like you can almost hear the part of yourself you abandoned. All at once, the past is too close to swallowing the present and you along with it. How terrible is memory, to constantly create what can never be touched again. How dangerous to be nothing without it.

But as Irene looked up from the trickles of black water trailing down the sink from her jaw, catching Marley’s glare in the round sudd ridden mirror, Irene had the feeling that long expired memories were the furthest thing from Marley’s mind.

The rusty tap groaned as Irene twisted it off and reached for the purple towel sitting near the mirror. Irene tossed it back down without checking her reflection.

“You and I have that in common,” Marley stated, leaning against the chipped yellow paint of the door frame.

The tap continued to drip. Irene’s pounding head and the tiny bathroom amplified it to that of a waterfall. “What?” Irene sighed, turning to face her with her back against the vanity.

“We’re both not sure what we’re looking at when we see you,” Marley folded her arms.

Irene sniggered, “It’s been a long night. Can we skip the poetics?”

“Apparently, not.”

Irene yawned and tried to rub the sight of Sherlock’s bleeding shoulder from the inside of her eyelids, “I admit it went poorly, Marley, okay? Trevor wasn’t meant to turn up until after. I wasn’t meant to be followed. But all things considered, the situation is still salvageable.” A siren sounded loudly in the street below, an inconvenient punctuation point to Irene’s declaration.

“WHAT’S SALVAGEABLE?” Marley bellowed, striding toward Irene. “The plan was that we’d take down the Pit, make it look like an accident, get the fuck out and wait for Trevor to tell us his next move! Now, he knows there was an imposter, he knows he can’t trust me and he knows it wasn’t an accident! 3 months of planning slaughtered! We’re lucky we’re not in pieces! Speaking of which, who the hell is that bloke on my couch which you have given zero explanation-! You never said-!”

“TREVOR KNEW IT WASN’T YOU!” Marley flinched at Irene’s shout. “That was why we were switching for months-” Irene grabbed Marley’s wrist, the black paint still on Marley smudging Irene’s dampened fingertips. “That’s why we made it impossible for him to notice a difference between us until he had to! He has to know there are rats in his syndicate, otherwise he won’t try and protect it!”   

For a long moment, Irene’s shout rung against the chipped bathroom walls, dissolving Marley’s voice into a whisper, “But why do you need him to protect it?” she pleaded. “What are you really doing?”

Her breathing was fast in the finite air between their faces. In the cramped bathroom, Marley practically had Irene pressed against the sink.

Ghostly tingles of déjà vu spread from where Irene’s fingers gripped her forearm. Running her tongue over her cracked lips, Irene tasted metal as she permitted them to smile. Marley pulled her eyes away from her lips up to Irene’s eyes.

“You used to be more fun when you didn’t trust me,” Irene’s voice was suddenly a purr, tracing her fingers down Marley’s arm. Her own skin was so pale, she found the contrast with Marley’s rich Jamaican tone intoxicating at the best of times, let alone when adrenaline tugged memories from their dusty corners.

“Hmmm…well you only used to lie to me about other women,” Marley’s skin slithered away from beneath Irene’s fingertips as she withdrew her arm from Irene’s reach.  “And that you hadn’t stolen my geography homework. Or read my journals.”

Irene bowed her head down, “Well, I didn’t steal your geography homework,” she offered, grinning. Marley’s shoulder nudged her away, a playful notion that didn’t chase away the tightness in her brows, or the strain in her words.

“Seriously though, Irene, what’s going on? You were always a little restless, but this is- I don’t want to say suicida-”

“Then, don’t.” Irene’s voice was suddenly as cold as the sharp prickle on the back of her neck.

“These kamikaze crusade missions- Do you want to get caught?”

“Not yet,” Irene winked at her.

“Stop it. This isn’t a game of cops and robbers-”

“Oh, thank goodness, I was never any good at cops and robbers- too hard to pick a side-”

Sighing, Marley clutched the front of her unruly brown curls before tugging her willowy fingers through her hair, “Just tell me something,” She mumbled, “so I didn’t just risk everything so you could lie to me.”

The grey of Irene’s eyes looked dismal in the reflection of Marley’s expectant green glare and it struck Irene that the emerald flecks of Marley’s pupils matched the rich shade of the coffee table in front of the sofa and the faded chipped tiles surrounding them in the bathroom. _The eyes are the window to the soul,_ she thought. But a window looks two ways. _Do our souls color the world? Or is it the other way around?_

Irene bit her lip, her silent reverie stretching out the minutes in the small space Marley maintained between them: Irene’s back against the sink while Marley’s arms folded resolutely over the space where their hands had been joined only moments before.

“Trevor is hunting for Sherlock Holmes,” Irene kept her voice even. “That’s why he came earlier than we thought - to warn you, the Admiral, that something might happen.”

Marley blinked profusely as if Irene’s answer was stuck in her eye. “Sherlock Holmes?” Marley frowned. “The dead detective from London?”

Irene nodded.

“Why?”

Irene cleared her throat, “Trevor thinks he’s responsible for Paris.”

“So…Trevor thinks you’re Sherlock Holmes? That’s good, isn’t it? He’s not looking for you. In fact, he’s looking for someone who’s dead.”

Irene pursed her lips, “Well, that depends on where you’re standing.”

Marley’s eyes narrowed, her eyes running up and down Irene as if to rifle through her very existence. “Okay…” Marley’s voice was slow, “where am I standing?”

Irene Adler cherished the moment of peace pulling air through her nostrils bought her before she forced her lips to form the answer Marley deserved.

“About 5 feet away from him.”

In an oddly comical reaction, Marley’s neck flew around to look over her shoulder, eyes wide, as if she was expecting Mr. Holmes’ disgruntled ghost to be lurking in the non-existent shadows of her little bathroom.

The lonely light globe’s reach looked tired in the risen sunlight now clambering through the small window above them. While the quiet engines of the early commuters yawning through the thin walls provided the unofficial soundtrack to Marley’s invisible thought process.

And after a minute that might have been a year- Marley clapped her hands together so jovially that Irene jumped back into the sink.

“This is grand!” she exclaimed, finally vacating Irene’s path to the door as she skipped back out into the living room. Bewildered, the muscles of Irene’s face strained into a frown. 

“I knew you were in there somewhere!” Marley giggled, her cheeks the elated polar opposite of Irene’s caution as Irene joined her in front of Sherlock’s sleeping form. “We’re going to be so rich!”

Irene was still trying to grasp Marley’s glee when the world became her lips. She tasted of salt and the paint and sweat. Soft and clumsy, minus the paint, they tasted exactly as Irene remembered them. Irene’s pulse possessed her every nerve as Marley’s fingers sought her jawline. But Irene’s reaction was too dazed, too slow in the wake of Marley’s excitement as she pulled away from her, her cheeks scolding beneath the absence of Marley’s fingers.

“You’re a genius,” Marley whispered. Her face was as flushed as Irene felt. “We hand him over to Trevor, we can have whatever we want! Why didn’t you tell me this was your real plan?” Marley’s phone materialized in her hand.

It was a movement Irene concluded must have been so instinctive, her senses deemed it unworthy to acknowledge. But the next thing they did acknowledge was Marley’s widened eyes as her phone shook in Irene’s palm.

No longer beside her with Sherlock’s sleeping form before them, Irene found herself standing between him and her oldest friend with only the green coffee table between them and her breaths running from her throat.

“What- What the hell are you doing?” Marley asked as if Irene had slapped her. Maybe she had.

“I can’t let you do that,” Irene panted.

Marley scoffed, “Maybe your brain fell out of your head in the year you vanished off the face of the planet. But turning him in is the only way we survive men like Trevor!”

Irene’s eye twitched as Marley snatched at the phone, but her grip was unrelenting. “He killed Jim Moriarty!” Marley half bellowed, “The price on his head is so insane you’d have to be crazy not to pass it up!”

“There are better prizes,” Irene retorted.

Marley’s eyebrows vanished into her hairline as she actually sniggered, “He must be very…” and her voice became a sneer as she threw her next words off her tongue, “well-endowed for you to say that.”

Irene felt everything she was recoil in disgust, “I see Trevor didn’t make you Admiral for your maturity,” Her words were Icey, but barely scratched the heat between them as the two women glowered at each other.

A tattered bedroom door creaked to their left and a sleepy croak crept out onto the scene, “Marley? Is that you?”

It was all Marley needed. The phone wrenched from Irene’s fingers-

“Marley!” Irene yelled, taking a step forward “Don’t-!”

But Irene couldn’t finish her sentence, or even lower her foot to complete her step in lieu of the hand gun pointed between her eyes.

All her organs turned to stone, anchoring her to where she stood between Marley and Sherlock’s unconscious crumpled form. Marley moved the barrel of the gun to Irene’s left. The blood galloped to Irene’s toes as she raised her hands above her head, her pulse a thunderstorm in her bones.

“I don’t think Trevor would mind a second hole in him,” Marley sighed, flipping the phone around, “and I certainly wouldn’t if it stops him from putting one in me. Or you. Besides, he’s a liar and a murderer.”

“Then, put a bullet in me, if that’s your criteria.” Irene swallowed back the tremble in her throat, keeping her voice calmer than the shudder in her knees, “But you shoot him, and my thanks is the last thing you’ll get.”

“You shot him,” Marley snarled.

“Not to make him worthy of a bargain with the devil.”

Marley shoved a mirthless laugh off her lips, “Funny, that’s what I’m trying to rescue you from.”

 _Seeing red…_ People say that…When they’re angry. Irene had heard it so much and it had seemed so utterly ridiculous. One of those things people say without meaning what they mean. She detested the dishonesty. But as the word “rescue” echoed in her ears, slithering so righteously off Marley’s tongue Irene could have strangled her with it had it been a physical thing, the world became as red as the blood resounding in her ears. The air drained itself of the colouring of any other emotion Marley might have coaxed out of her memories as Irene drew herself up. Marley’s throat tensed.

“I do not need rescuing,” Irene ground the words out from between her teeth so they reverberated in her skull like debris from the storm in her chest. “Not from you. Not from anyone. It is your choice to do so and it is one you will regret.” Her voice shook, though there was nothing unsteady about it. “You’re welcome to ask Mr Holmes all about it. But you won’t shoot him. You won’t hand him to Trevor because if you do, you can cross out all the names of everything I’ve ever been to you in your journals and replace them with enemy.”

Marley’s chest was rising and falling as rapidly as the gun tip now trembling in the air in front of Irene’s face, “I’m sorry,” Marley breathed, raising the phone to her ear. “But I can’t let you destroy me or what little is left of yourself for some suicidal schem-”

“MARLENE PARRING! JUST WHAT DO YOU THINK YOU’RE DOING?”

Both Irene and Marley jumped, the phone spinning out of Marley’s fingers and bouncing off the table before hitting the floor in series of dull thumps. Their necks wrenched around in search of the shout.

A woman stood behind Marley in faded blue surgical scrubs that seemed fluorescent in comparison to the extraordinarily dark brown shade of her skin. Her age would almost be impossible to determine were it not for her long grey hair drooping in a lopsided bun against her sword like cheekbones.

Irene Adler never ceased to marvel at how much Marley looked like her mother, from the jawline glinting with flawless skin, the deep-set grass green pupils, to a head that towered above Irene’s short frame. However, on this particular morning, Marley Parring’s wide eyes and dropped jaw were the exact opposite of Linley Parring’s indignant glare.

She threw up her arms. “I leave for one casual shift, Marlene- gah!” Linley Parring’s accent was exasperated and more Jamaican than the highland hybrid that twisted the tongue of her daughter. “In all my years- since when did you point guns at this girl!?” she tutted and shook her head, walking from the doorway of her room to lay a kiss on Irene’s forehead. “Put that gun away now, Marlene!”

Obliging her mother, Marley stuffed her gun back in her jacket with a scowl. No sooner had Irene lowered her hands, Linley was smothering them with kisses.

“Hey, beautiful girl,” she cooed in a voice that made Irene feel small in the warmest of ways, summoning a smile to her lips despite the residual events of the night still quickening her heart. Linley nodded down at Sherlock. “Been a lot of years since you brought a stray home to this house.”

“He’s a criminal, mum. He should go.” Marley huffed.

“If I kicked all the criminals out from under this roof, there’d be no one to pay rent, my girl.” snapped Linley, unraveling her fingers from Irene’s as she leaned down to examine Sherlock’s limp form.

“Goodness, this is a broken one,” she muttered, taking Sherlock’s hand into her own and pressing her fingers to his wrist. With her other hand, she brushed Sherlock’s hair from his head, flicking her tongue against the roof of her mouth to fill the silence. “What did you girls do? Use this boy’s bones for football practice?”

“Irene used him as target practice,” muttered Marley. Linley, ignoring her daughter’s comment, locked her green eyes onto Irene’s. Irene hadn’t even noticed that she had crouched down beside her.

“He’s got some nasty head trauma, beautiful girl.” Linley’s voice was gentle, as wishful as Sherlock’s jagged breathing. “If he wakes, he might not remember you shot him,” she paused, her eyes tugging at something Irene kept buried in the back of her lungs. She swallowed.  “Or even you,” Linley finished.

 

 

 

_**Present Day**_

**_Sherlock Holmes had a theory and that theory was this: If there were two people in the known universe that could be caught tampering with a crime scene and not be charged with obstruction, it was himself and Molly Hooper. Previously established facts that supported this theory included the very foundation of Sherlock’s friendship with Inspector Greg Lestrade, the fact that Lestrade’s cheeks turned inescapably pink when Molly Hooper entered a room and the fact that hers did the same._ **

However, this theory became difficult to demonstrate flawlessly when Sergeant Sally Donovan became an annoying variable. Especially as her chuckling bounced across an interrogation room table at his ears.

“Isn’t committing homicide enough for you, freak? You’ve got to conspire against police too?”

“Interesting,” glowered Sherlock.

“What?”

“Homicide means I murdered a human being. As I killed Charles Magnussen, I don’t think that term applies.”

Sally raised an eyebrow, “Do you actually hear yourself? You know, you’ve been arrested and anything you say-”

“Is killing time before you let myself and Miss Hooper go,” Sherlock interrupted.

“Kill the next 10 seconds with why you stole that phone, then.”

“No, thank you, Sergeant.”

“How do I know you didn’t take the phone to remove any association of yourself with those bodies?”

Sherlock sighed, “You don’t, but it wouldn’t be the first time the efficiency of my work suffered at the hands of your assumptions.”

“Your work being what? The murder of two people and the staging of their corpses?” She reached for the plastic evidence pouch containing the Woman’s phone and the threat scarring its face. She dangled it in front of him.

His fingernails pierced the skin of his handcuffed palms, stinging beneath the table as she continued her monologue with a spark in her eye. “Two bodies and when police get there, not only were you there already, but you’d tampered with the crime scene.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, but didn’t take them from the Woman’s phone, “Molly called me first. Hardly criminal she also thinks you’re inept at your job, Sergeant. If that was a crime, Scotland Yard’s cells would be overrun.”

Before Sally’s lips wrapped around her response, the door to the interrogation room clanged open, bounding off the wall to reveal a frazzle-eyed Lestrade.

“Sergeant, go and interview Miss Hooper.”

Sally’s narrow glare was still stuck to Sherlock.

“Now, Sergeant!”

Peeling her eyes away from Sherlock, Sally threw him a final scowl over her shoulder as Inspector Lestrade took her vacated seat opposite him.

“What do you know, Sherlock?”

“Generally, more than most. Always less than I’d like.”

Inspector Lestrade’s chubby fingers pulled down over his face, “About those bodies!”

“Molly found them first!”

***

Sally Donovan hated Sherlock Holmes and everybody knew it and this was a problem because it meant that no one in the precinct took her seriously on any issue that may arise in relation to him. All because he had to be proven right, didn’t he? Well, that didn’t mean he was innocent. And even now with Moriarty’s supposed return and Sherlock Holmes was our only hope, Sally would swallow her teeth whole if it meant that certain people named Greg would see that even though Moriarty was back and so was Sherlock Holmes it didn’t mean he could be trusted. Especially since he’d still faked his death for two years. If Jim Moriarty was never dead in the first place, he would have been smart enough to know.

So, the big question was this: what had Sherlock Holmes been doing if he hadn’t really killed Jim Moriarty, or died himself?

“Inspector Lestrade already questioned me,” Molly Hooper’s stammer interrupted Sally’s train.

“It’s common practice for more than one cop to interview,” Sally answered, clasping her hands together and straightening up in her chair as she surveyed the woman sitting across from her.

Molly Hooper’s breathing emanated in uneven whispers through her nose, making the shoulders of her pale pink blouse rise and fall in a rush. Her bottom lip was dry, red and puffy with the marks of her teeth, and her hair was nothing short of a small scale disaster of bobby pin mayhem.

Sally cleared her throat so it echoed against the concrete walls of the interrogation room.

“According to St Barts time sheet, your shift started at 8 am,” Sally gestured at the copy of the roster the hospital had faxed them. “Yet, according to Mr. Holmes’ phone records, you discovered the bodies at around 7 am.”

Molly licked her straggled lips, “Traffic,” she mumbled. “And I usually clock on early.”

“Yes,” Sally agreed, pulling a folder towards her and fishing around for Molly’s time sheet record. “But never an hour early. In the 4 years, you’ve worked for St Barts the earliest you’ve started has been 45 minutes- And that was once.”

Sally Donovan waited, pointing her gaze at Molly in a silence armed and ready to break.

Molly’s eyebrows stiffened, “What are you accusing me of, Sally? Being an early bird?”

“Why did you call Mr. Holmes first?”

“He’s a detective,” replied Molly.

“A _consulting_ detective. The only way he gets in on police matters is if the police call him in. Not civilians. The commissioner has made that very clear.”

Molly stammered, “He’s my friend. I was in shock.”

“Fine. Then, why not call Inspector Lestrade, given your recent history?”

Molly’s cheeks were suddenly the same pink as her crinkled blouse, “I did call him.”

“Yes. After you called Mr. Holmes. But you never made a 111 call.”

“Didn’t think I would need to after I called Gre-” she corrected herself, “Detective Inspector Lestrade.”

“You were part of the post-mortem team that confirmed Sherlock’s apparent death in 2012, correct?”

“It happened on the roof of my workplace,” Molly’s voice was wary. “Yes. I was there.”   

“Was Jim Moriarty’s body? Was it there?”

“I thought I was being arrested for obstruction, Sergeant Donovan?”

“Answer the question, Miss Hooper.”

“I believe I don’t have to answer any questions unrelated to the crime you intend to charge me with.”

“So, you wouldn’t say that helping Jim Moriarty fake his death is obstruction of justice?”

Molly’s jaw hung loosely in the silence before her stammer shattered it, “I beg your pardon?” she breathed.

“In 2011, you made a blog on which a user named ‘Jim’ left several flirtatious comments indicating he was a colleague.”

Molly’s mouth opened and closed, her words coming out in strangled jabs, “I can’t bel- no no no – this can’t be happening.”

Sally continued unabated, “When Sherlock Holmes’ suicide was finally investigated in 2013, CCTV footage confirmed Jim Moriarty’s presence in that hospital around the same time those comments were left on your blog, Miss Hooper.”

Hyperventilating, Molly failed to push her bolted chair away from the table. Her eyes flying around like a bird trapped in a box. Cuffs jingling as Molly yanked at her fingers.

“Sherlock Holmes, Jim Moriarty, Greg Lestrade- you’ve quite the collection of players.” Sally’s voice was blunt, cold as the brick walls bouncing Miss Hooper’s sharp breaths around.

“I’m a morgue practitioner. Not some criminal mastermind!”

“Now, Jim Moriarty is alive and two bodies have turned up in your morgue and instead of calling 111 you call Sherlock Holmes and Greg Lestrade.”

“You’re accusing me- of- you’re accusing me of- being an accomplice of Jim Moriarty?”

Sally’s glare remained unbroken. “There is sufficient evidence to indicate it.”

“Sufficient evidence?” Molly Hooper’s shaky laughter was a shrill jagged thing absent of any kind of actual humor. “Like you had sufficient evidence to indicate Sherlock all those years ago?”

Sally’s bones turned to ice.

“How long have you waited for this?” Molly asked, breathless. “What- you can’t go after Sherlock so you’ll come after me?”

“You still haven’t answered the question.”

“Because you’re asking the wrong ones,” retorted Molly, her high pitched voice ringing against the mirror, making it wobble. “I have been a friend to you and Greg for years, pulling in favours that could’ve easily lost me my job, same with Sherlock. Sherlock Holmes is my friend. I walked into work this morning, found two bloodied up corpses and in my shock I called the two people I know as the most capable to help. If I had put those bodies there that would make me an idiot, or the most confident criminal who ever lived.” Her handcuffs clanged as she raised her hands to rub her eyes. “As for Jim Moriarty,” Sally frowned as Molly’s determined eye seemed to flash, “he manipulated me to get at Sherlock.” Molly gulped, “Surely, you of all people can’t blame me for that.”

There were footsteps in the hall outside, thunder clouds in the quiet as the two woman stared at each other.

“I never said anything about you putting the bodies there, Miss Hooper,” Sally said, finally.

“Now, you don’t have to,” huffed Molly, leaning back in her chair.

The door to the interrogation room made them jump as it flew open, crashing into the din.

“We’re free to go, Molly,” Sherlock said, his glare venomous as it settled on Sally. Greg’s head appeared behind him in the doorway.

Greg nodded, “Let her go, Sergeant.”

Sighing, Sally felt her eyebrows scuttle toward her hairline as she yanked the set of keys from around her neck, leaned forward and uncuffed Molly Hooper. The smallest of grunts escaping Molly as Sally pulled off the cuffs and placed them on her belt.

Moments later she was folding her arms, watching as Sherlock Holmes left with Molly Hooper on his heels. She waited until the pair of them had vanished into the elevator and its ancient trundling was out of earshot before she spoke.

“Please don’t tell me you gave him the phone back,” she said.

“He said if I didn’t he wouldn’t help.”

“Greg-”

“Why have you been investigating Molly Hooper, Sergeant?”

“You asked me to question her.”

“About the phone, Donovan. You didn’t even mention it. Clearly, you were digging.”

“I’m doing my job,” muttered Sally.

“Need I remind you that the last time you used that excuse, you disgraced this whole precinct?”

“Need I remind you that I wouldn’t have done it at all if you didn’t trust liars and freaks so much,” Sally snapped back.

“Go home, Sergeant. Report to the crime scene with a better attitude tomorrow at 0800.”

And, rolling her eyes, Sally clamped her teeth down over her retort and stomped towards the lifts in the wake of Sherlock Holmes and Molly Hooper.

 

 

  _ **2011**_

 

**_Drip_ **

**_Drip_ **

**_Drip_ **

**_Drip_ **

Each water droplet falling into the bowl sizzled against the walls of Irene’s skull as Linley squeezed Sherlock’s blood from the washer. The red floated around in the water like a horrific clouded constellation, before dissolving and tainting it completely. Linley kept replacing it, but the water never seemed as clear as the first time, as if the bowl’s memory of the blood was enough to rid the water of its purity forever. Irene couldn’t even smell it after a while, but the stain was still there.

A good half an hour passed. Marley had gone to take a shower while her mother cleaned the gashes painting Sherlock’s torso. As for Mr. Holmes, well, he was still dreaming.

Sitting beside him in Marley’s only other disheveled blue lounge chair, Irene’s bruising sung cruelly under her skin with her every movement. The deficiency of adrenaline from her self-induced motor accident now leaving her only with the more uncomfortable consequences.

She hurt all over, but she was awake. She was safe.

Linley rung more blood from the cloth.

 _I wish that was enough for you,_ she thought, inwardly cursing her restless pulse as it panicked through her veins.

Irene grit her teeth. _What had he been doing in the cages?_ That wasn’t what they agreed. He knew that she was pretending to be the Admiral and she would have to kill him if he was discovered. He’d brought a syringe to a fist fight. So, if he had anyone to blame for the bullets and bruises, it was not her. If she had to set him on fire, it was only to burn away the evidence of his idiocy. He wasn’t allowed to die just because he was stupid enough to not do as she had instructed.

“Stop fretting, beautiful girl.” Linley’s voice wove through her scrambling thoughts to pull her head up from her hands. “He will wake. His soul is exhausted, but protecting another’s tends to do that.” She threw a pointed glance over her shoulder at Irene before returning to Sherlock’s wound.

Irene’s scoff was so forceful it sounded like she tried to cough up her response, “None of that, L. You know I don’t believe in it.”

Linley still didn’t turn around as she spoke, “And I don’t believe that Leonardo DaVinci painted the Mona Lisa. His name is still behind her smile. Just as this boy is the reason that you still can.”

Irene’s stomach dropped.

“Don’t look so shocked, girl. I’m 67. I’ve seen what people do when they owe the ultimate of debts to another. This is a counterproductive payment plan, I must say.”

“I had no choice, we were being per-”

“Not the blood, girl,” Linley waved her words away as if she were swatting flies. “I’m curious how you think you’re repaying him by becoming what he’ll destroy.”

Irene laughed, “Save your enigmatically vague predictions for your clients, L. I see business is booming.” She nodded at the rusted ‘by appointment only’ sign. Linley humphed and turned her head to face Irene.

“All your actions tonight, including breaking my daughter's heart _again_ , has been to protect this one because you know your soul is not safe without him.”

Irene said nothing. But she didn’t back down her gaze either.

 “Oh, let me guess,” Yawned Irene overdramatically, “we’re soul mates?”

Linley tutted, “No such bad luck, beautiful girl. Your soul is as whole as his. Gotta be incomplete to be a soul mate, see. No, no, no…” Linley trailed off as she squeezed the last of Sherlock’s blood into the bowl, threw the rung cloth into it and stood up to walk over to the basin near Marley’s lilac cupboards. Her rather internal bruising pushed a groan from her chest as Irene stood up to follow her, making a conscious effort not to look at Sherlock as she did.

“Is he going to be okay when he wakes up?” Irene asked.

Linely turned on the tap, not looking up from the sloshing water in the bowl when she spoke. “Why? What will happen if he isn’t?” The water, pink with blood, floated noisily down the drain for a few seconds before Irene answered.

“I’ll-” she trapped the rest in the breath. _No one can know. It won’t work otherwise._ “It’ll be inconvenient to a lot of unsavory people if he doesn’t,” Irene finished, her voice sounded more on the defeated side of defiant.

“Count yourself as one of them?” Linley asked.

“Always,” Irene winked.

Linley’s eyes narrowed in a way that made Irene feel as if she was 12 with a cookie hidden behind her back.

“Interesting,” Linley hummed. “You are not worried he will wake and think unfondly of you shooting him. I would.” Irene said nothing as Linley continued, “Which tells me his forgiveness is as absolute as knowledge,” she dried her long fingers on a stained green tea towel, “for you.” She finished with a grin.

“Seriously? Don’t think just because that rusted sign is in here I’m your client, L.” Irene warned again.

“My daughter loves you, Irene. Yet we both know her forgiveness is an unreliable brand, too angry to be accountable.”

“Oh, L,” Rolling her eyes, Irene turned back to stagger into the living area and flop herself into the vacant armchair, “I’m too tired.”

Linley followed, “Your soul is bound to that one, beautiful girl. Whatever the universe needs from you, you need him to give it. No ordinary soul would forgive you for what you’ve done to that boy.” She didn’t say it with any kind of mirth. She spoke as if she was telling Irene an interesting fact about anatomy.

Lifting her head up from where she’d leaned it back, Irene lifted her eyelids to lock her gaze with Linley’s, ensuring she stretched out her glower for a few moments longer than needed.

The chuckle simmered off her lips like a nightmare, “you have no idea what he did to _me_.”

And Linley’s eyes flitted, fluttering over where she sat in the chair beside the sofa, over Sherlock sleeping on it with his breath a quiet rattle and Linley smiled, “Exactly.”

Irene leaned her head back, adrenaline now gone, exhaustion filled her bones with whispers and her mind with dust. Shaking her head, Irene scratched her cheek too hard, but the pain didn’t distract from her fatigue. She closed her eyes.

 

“Don’t worry,” Marley’s voice sent a jolt through her spine. Groaning, Irene’s neck clicked upright and she opened her eyes.

Marley stood over her. The chocolate shade of her skin now completely free of black paint, she perched herself on the coffee table. Even when her hair was wet it was an untameable thing, fizzing out from her head. Marley tugged at the sleeve of her hoody and something like envy trickled through Irene’s veins. Marley was so comfortable, unguarded, it wasn’t fair it looked so beautiful on her.

“Get some rest,” Marley said. “Trevor won’t call until he’s sure he can’t find you. This is the only place he won’t look because he thinks it’s just me here.” Marley hesitated, “Go on. Mum wouldn’t let me turn you in even if I wanted to.”

Irene failed to stifle a yawn, “Thank you, Marley.”

“Hey, I’m sorry, okay? For earlier.”

“Are you?” Irene yawned back.

“Look, I don’t know why you’re with him, what you’re planning, but it’s totally not my place to judge what it is.”

Irene sniggered, “You should tell your mother that.”

“And I’ll help you with whatever, but you do know you give us lesbians a bad name when you don’t watch your stupid mouth, right?”

Irene yawned again.

“Sorry Mar, telling people what they want to hear – it’s a filthy habit,” she giggled. “I never completely lie though,” Irene offered, her words slurring proudly as her head wondered back to rest against the back of the armchair.

“Yeah, yeah, get your dumb mouth some shut up and get some shut-eye.”

But Irene Adler was asleep before Marley’s voice had left her ears.

 

“IRENE!”

Daylight breached her eyelids and the smell of smoke greeted her nostrils. Her eyes flew open so fast it was like her eyeballs tried to catapult themselves from her skull. But they didn’t because otherwise, they would have hit her oldest friend in the face. Blinking, Irene frowned at Marley standing over her- “Wha-?”

“I think he’s waking up-”

Irene tripped out of her chair onto her knees beside the sofa. Sherlock was stirring, his recently cleaned limbs shuffling restlessly as small groans escaped his throat.

“Sherlock?” His name fled from her lips more like a breath than a word.

He greeted it with a groan, “Mmmmmmmm,” his head lulled in her direction, “how long have I been gone?”

“Couple of hours,” Irene whispered, her heart stumbling in her chest.

“You’ve had plenty of time, then,” he mumbled, his eyes opening to find hers.

Irene frowned, “To… what?”

“To come up with another ludicrous tale I can tell my brother’s secret service as to why they are short another Harley,” Sherlock grimaced as he forced himself upright, breaking their eye contact, “Other than ‘that same Dominatrix who I tricked you into thinking was dead doesn’t like to listen to reason’”

Irene scoffed, “Reason being the man who takes a break from infiltrating a crime syndicate to play fight club? What the hell were you doing?”

“I was bored,” shrugged Sherlock, wincing at the movement of his shoulder as Irene leaned back from him.

Her stomach curled, “If you find this so boring, go back to Paris. I’m sure they’re done scraping your blood off their boots by now.” She got up and sunk back into her armchair. “If you had followed my instructions on how to get down to the cells without being detected-”

“I did!”

“Really? Because the only way you would have been thrown into a fight last night was if you got caught with the wrong code word!” Irene snapped back. She wanted to kick something and by something she meant him.

“Adomania,” muttered Sherlock.

Irene’s head jolted up, “Adomania-?” she repeated.

Sherlock’s pale jaw was suddenly scarlet beneath the bruises.

“That was last night’s code,” Both Irene and Sherlock’s heads twisted up. Irene, a little embarrassed, had nearly forgotten Marley was in the room. “I mean, the night before this one,” Marley finished.

“You must be Marley Parring,” Sherlock said, his voice slicing the air like a petulant child with scissors.

Marley raised a heavily penciled eyebrow, “Yeah, and you’re Sherlock Holmes.”

Irene groaned,”Marle-”  

“You are unbelievable!” cried Sherlock, glaring at Irene. “I didn’t save your life to make my death a living hell!”

Irene rolled a lifeless chuckle off her lips, “No- you just did it to make mine one.”

The silence writhed in the air.

“Okay, kids, let’s take it down a notch, eh?” Marley’s elbow nudged Irene’s, a reassuring gesture the corner of Irene’s eye saw Sherlock’s flit away from a second too late. “Now, either the both of you explain what’s happening here, or I wake up my mother.”

With a scowl that evolved steadily into a groan, Sherlock sat forward and twisted himself around. The crack of his neck made Irene flinch, but she remained where she was.

After a moment, Sherlock grunted his way into a standing position.

“Has Trevor made the call yet?” He half panted at Irene, clutching his shoulder with one hand and shoving his sticky hair back with the other. Irene shook her head.

“Tell me what’s going on, or the only phone call you’re gonna hear is the anonymous tip-off call I make to Interpol,” Marley barked.

“No, you won’t,” Sherlock yawned.

Marley bristled, “Try me, asshole.”

Sherlock rolled his eyes, “Interpol does not share our common goal of keeping Miss Adler safe, Miss Parring. But if it will finally get me some peace and quiet-” Sherlock tested moving his shoulder, an endeavor that resulted in the cuts on his cheeks scrunching with his face. “What’s going on is Miss Adler and myself are setting a trap.”

“For who…?”

Irene curled her lips around the words, “The puppet masters.”

 

 

  _ **Present Day**_

 

**_If there was one thing Molly learned from her interactions with police it was that when they are looking for someone who is guilty, particularly if they’re clever, they don’t look for the person who is scared. They do not even look for the person who is calm. The truly guilty are one or both of two things: they are smug or they are angry._ **

Molly Hooper was trying to be neither. The result was less than convincing, but one of the benefits of being Molly Hooper was that people didn’t pay as close attention to you as they did others. Especially when the mysteriously dead Irene Adler was involved.

“What did you mean?”

Scotland Yard’s lift gurgled its way down towards street level. Molly shuffled sidewards to face Sherlock. The lift had no other occupants except their grey reflections. She repeated herself, “What did you mean when you said you stole the phone back, Sherlock?”

“I only say exactly what I mean, Molly,” Sherlock replied, his voice as curt as his eyes were determined not to look at her.

“But isn’t that-?” she dragged her teeth over her lips, “Isn’t that Irene Adler’s phone?”

“What makes you say that?” he said, his words sharp.

“It’s the same phone you were x-raying ages ago,” Molly paused. “I read John’s blog. I’m not daft. Why did you have it?”

It took a moment for Molly to realize her heart was racing. She was scared of the answer to this question. It wasn’t necessarily that she was scared of what Irene Adler could mean to him. That ship sailed ages ago.

It was that if Sherlock had really stolen this phone _back_ and he had deduced Jim Moriarty was not responsible for the bodies in the morgue, then that meant someone else was hunting Sherlock who knew him _personally._ So personally that they knew Sherlock took the phone from Irene Adler, knew where he would keep it, knew where Molly worked and that Molly would call him when she found the bodies. 

She was scared because she counted to Sherlock Holmes, but had no desire for herself or anyone to be part of a body count.

“That’s the problem, Molly.” Sherlock’s actual answer yanked her from her reverie, “Apparently, I didn’t have it. Come in early tomorrow. I need to know who those corpses are.”

The lift lurched to a halt with a leaden clunk. Molly rocked on her heels as the doors crawled opened and Sherlock stepped out without so much as another backward glance at her.

Molly’s car was parked a block from 221b, but she had the feeling Sherlock didn’t want her following him for the second time that day. The doors of the elevator began to close, but Molly scuttled sideways through them into the foyer of Scotland Yard before they could.

 

Two squashy tube rides later, Molly had to rummage through her handbag in search of her keys for a good 5 minutes before her fingers clasped around them. Relieved she didn’t have to tip the contents of her bag out in the hallway, she twisted the key in the lock and stopped.

The events of the day seemed to suddenly weigh down this moment as if this second had stopped in the traffic of time too suddenly so all the others behind it ended up in a blazing pile.

 _Breathe,_ Molly told herself. _If you’re going to have a panic attack, have it in your home. Just twist the key and step forward._

She did.

The dark sky outside couldn’t reach past the blockade of street lamps that lined the street below Molly’s window. As a result, Molly could never achieve anything close to pitch-black darkness in her flat, even with her polka dotted curtains drawn. But it wasn’t exactly light either. The artificial light from the street littered her living room with shadows, creeping forward menacingly against the bright.

“Toby?” Molly called. “Where are you, boy?” she made a psssssst sound with her tongue and teeth as she dropped her bag and moved towards the light switch. “Toby?”

She flipped the switch with the tip of her nail and immediately wished she had let the dark be.

Fear swallowed her memory of how to breathe, how to move, or even how to scream.

Toby’s green eyes stared at her from his striped tabby face. He was perched on the arm of the sofa, purring into the silence as Jim Moriarty stroked his ears.

“Aww,” Jim drawled as Toby nuzzled his head against Jim’s fingertips, “I think he missed me,” Jim lined his teeth up into a smile as he allowed his black eyes to wonder up from Toby to fix on her, “Did you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hey pals, thanks for reading! I'm sorry its been a while. I do not recommend mental breakdowns. However, if you're feeling a bit like a shattered void, I do reccomend you go to the doctors and get some help. It takes time, yeah, but honestly, I'm feelin sm better than I did 2 months ago when I was cryin non stop (I basically wrote all of chp 1 of this fic whilst cryin no lie deppression is a lil bitch). BUT AIN'T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT SO I WROTE A LONG CHAPTER TO MAKE UP FOR MY ABSENCE! 
> 
> I'm a hella family orientated person. In my experience everyone has a family whether you chose them or you were born into it. Everyone has people they fall back on. Even the fabulously bamf bisexual Irene Adler.
> 
> ALSO, that thing Linley says about souls is based on something i read where people who seek soul mates only have half souls so I kinda thought, "what if people who don't need peeps like that have whole souls?"
> 
> Anywho! thanks again for your patience and reading! leave a comment or hmu on tumblr @letzplaymurder or twitter/youtube @akajustmerry I love to hear feedback even if its just keyboard smashin (I'd actually LOVE t know what ya'll thought of Marley so PLEASE lemme know)
> 
> see ya next time, pals! hope ur all well as heck :)
> 
> Merry xo


	3. The Uncooperative Dead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two nameless corpses are covered in blood and carrying a message for Sherlock Holmes, but amnesia keeps him from understanding what it is, or why he just knows it is crucial he solves it ASAP. Can he decipher the message and solve a case in which he’s a Person Of Interest? And why is Jim Moriarty hiding in Molly Hooper’s apartment?

_**Present Day** _

_**There are two kinds of people on this planet. The first kind foolishly believe they will be remembered.  For one reason or another, they think what they do to occupy their existence is worthy of a finite immortality beyond their death when in reality their existence will be reduced to 2 numbers and a dash that will weather away anyway. The second kind do their best to ignore the reality of finite immortality. Occasionally, the truly happy succeed. Not for long though.** _

Sebastian Moran fit into the second category, but his awareness of his mortality only stretched as far as the faded scars on his wrists. Hitmen such as himself (though there were none to rival his skillset) had no grand delusions of their mortality. You couldn’t when you ended lives for a living. Sebastian did not look forward to death, but he didn't fear it neither.

Although death was starting to sound a lot more entertaining than being Irene Adler's glorified neighborhood watch dog.

Owing to the two story flats looming over both sides, Molly Hooper’s curved street was entirely in shadow despite the 8am sunlight Sebastian knew lurked somewhere beyond the roof over his head. The natural light that did manage to work its way through the windows in front of him was exceptionally bland through the thin grey curtains and did nothing to warm the cramped excuse of an apartment he was staking out in. But the shaded light did manage to make the maroon leather couches behind him look even uglier. At least it illuminated his focus point enough.

Molly Hooper’s apartment itself was empty, except for when she stumbled through it, or her tabby cat prowled the window sill.

Yawning, Sebastian tossed a greasy slap of hair from his eyes so he could watch the screen of his IPad more clearly.  The grainy CCTV footage showed a pixilated version of Molly Hooper pulling her apartment door shut behind her, hand shaking slightly as she pocketed her keys.

Sebastian sat forward. The fold out camp chair creaked under his weight. He had not really slept, but unless he was very much mistaken (which he wasn’t) Molly Hooper was wearing the exact same items of clothing she had been wearing last night.

His fingers flew across the tablet, bringing up the footage of Molly Hooper entering her apartment 12 hours ago. Yes, he was right.

This wouldn’t be unusual if this had been someone else’s apartment and Miss Hooper had subjected herself to being someone’s one night stand, but it was her apartment. So, the question became: why had she not changed in her own home?

Flipping the protective cover over the tablet, he flung it aside onto the second (and equally as atrocious) leather lounge beside him. Stretching his arms up until he was standing, he leaned forward and twitched the curtain further away from the window.

It had been rather fortunate that the family who usually occupied the apartment directly adjacent to Miss Hooper’s had been blessed with winning an unexpected trip to the Whitsundays. Fortunate in the sense they were lucky that Miss Adler had engineered it to be so, rather than leaving security entirely to him. Sebastian plucked the detachable scope from his sniper and brought it to his eye.

There was no movement. Miss Hooper’s red spotted curtains were drawn. Sebastian searched for Miss Hooper’s cat between the lines of his crosshairs. The window frames were lacks of any kind of light or life. But the absence of Miss Hooper’s scruffy feline was unsettling in the same way the absence of traffic in Trafalgar square on Christmas morning was unsettling, in the same way a pile of unopened mail is unsettling.  Sebastian returned his scope to his rifle with a click.

Crouching down on the orange paisley rug (did these people have eyes?), Sebastian pulled his laptop towards him. Waking up the screen, his fingers scrambled over the keys until he was listening to the audio of the bug he’d placed in the cat’s ear. He queued it forward until an hour before Miss Hooper arrived back home last night.

The audio crackled and gulped, but Sebastian was sure he heard a footfall too heavy to be Miss Hooper’s. Bringing the keyboard’s speaker up to his ear, he listened closer.

The intruder was clever enough not to speak. Sebastian listened as their feet shuffled around the apartment. No doubt the intruder was looking for the very bug he was listening through. The footsteps stopped.

The static increased, violent enough that Sebastian almost threw the laptop away from his ear. No, it wasn’t static. It was _purring._ The cat was purring.

The intruder was familiar.

But Sebastian Moran had no time to let his mind run through the possibilities before-

“Tobyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy, where’s mummy?”

Sebastian dropped the laptop. It plonked dully on the rug before he yanked his phone from the pocket of his leather coat. Hitting speed dial, he raised it to his ear.

“This better be good,” Moran could almost hear Irene Adler’s scowl. Despite the fact that neither of them could see the other, he returned it in full as he spoke.

Sebastian picked his teeth with the edge of his thumbnail, “I just thought you’d be interested.”

“In?”

“Molly ‘ooper has a new flatmate of a consulting criminal nature.”

Irene Adler swore, yelling at whoever was near her to leave the room. When she next spoke, her voice was tight.

She cleared her throat, “Are you sure?”

“You’re seriously questioning me? Asides, you knew this would happen.”

“I just wanted to be wrong for once. Any movement?”

“No,” Sebastian replied, rising to his feet and jerking back the curtain again. “But Miss Hooper left in one piece for work and no CCTV footage shows anyone leaving.”

“So, he’s cowering there?”

Sebastian sniggered, “Jim doesn’t cower.”

There was silence but for the whistle of their phone connection.

“I can kill him,” suggested Sebastian, growing bored of the pause.

“No,” Irene snapped. “I need him. And he still needs to think you’re gone.”

Sebastian scratched his head and sank back into his fold out chair, “Fine. We leave Miss Hooper to play house, then? Sure Mr Holmes would appreciate that.” Sniffling, he scraped the mud off his boot onto the window sill, following the dry specks of mud to the ground where they shattered.

“There you go again with the ‘we’,” Irene Adler shot back. Sebastian could hear her pacing. “Fuck,” she muttered. “I can’t have her as a risk.”

“No,” agreed Sebastian. The next pause was so long he checked she hadn’t ended the call. Lifting the phone back to his ear, he cleared his throat, “Orders?”

“Okay,” Irene took a breath. “Are you prepared to disappear, if you need to?” she asked.

Sebastian licked his lips into a smirk he didn't care no one could see, “I was never anywhere to start with.” 

***

The contents of Greg Lestrade’s day called for far more coffee than he was capable of consuming on the brisk walk from his car, into the lobby, down the lift, a flight of stairs and into St Bart’s morgue.

Mediating between Donovan and Sherlock was troublesome on an easy case, let alone when one of the key witnesses was Molly Hooper, one of Sherlock’s closest friends and the woman Inspector Lestrade had taken to dinner precisely four times in the last month.

This was before he even considered that somewhere out there was a maniac slaughtering couples, covering them in blood, stuffing their heads with pieces of dead rat and leaving them in the morgue for people to find.

And THAT was before he considered that Sherlock clearly had a personal connection to the case other than Molly Hooper, but refused to cooperate, making him a person of interest as well as a consultant.

Greg rubbed the absence of sleep from his eyes before stepping through the swinging doors to the morgue.

It was uncomfortably cold, but Greg felt that had less to do with the temperature than the nature of the place. Disinfectant worked its way up through his nostrils and he flexed his hand around the warmth oozing through his glove from the coffee in his hand. Blinking in the fluorescents, he looked around.

The forensic team had already set up camp. Despite the fact it was 7:30am, Sargent Donovan was already talking to Anderson. The pair of them bent over the blood covered bodies, brows furrowing as they whispered.

Greg cleared his throat, “Morning Sergeant.”

Sally stood bolt upright. Clearly, he had interrupted something. “Listen, you two. Whatever beef you’ve got with Sherlock, bury it. I have enough to worry about without worrying about a second mutiny from you pair. So, Donovan, you’re Sherlock’s shadow for this case.”

Anderson sniggered as Sally’s jaw dropped, “Please, tell me you’re joking,” she spluttered.

Greg dragged a hand down his face, failing not to snap, “Do I seem comedic, Sargent? He’s a POI and our consultant. Shadow him, or clock off.”

Sally’s arms recoiled into a fold against her coat. Clamping her mouth shut, she nodded.

“Now,” Said Lestrade. “Report, Anderson.” Anderson rose to his feet, still pushing his lips together to suppress his sniggering. “Anderson!”

“Right, yes, sorry. It’s not blood.”

Greg frowned, “Pardon?”

“The red substance on the bodies, it isn’t blood. It just looks like it. A good copy, but the chemistry is wrong.”

“What is it, then?” Greg asked.

“Paint.”

All of them wheeled around. Sherlock was standing in the doorway, leaning against the frame with his arms folded. The shadows under his eyes rivalling Greg’s own as he unhitched himself and strode forward towards where they had all gathered around the slabs. The bellowing black pallet of his long coat and suit, a striking contrast to his pale skin and the sterilized whiteness of the room.

“Paint?” Greg repeated.

“Partially,” Sherlock nodded, parking himself next to Greg beside the slab that held the female. “There is definitely blood in the substance, but there is also paint.”

“So-?”

“Is Molly here yet?” Sherlock barked, cutting through Greg’s inquiry.

“No,” Greg replied, keeping the worry out of his voice not without effort. “I assumed she’d be coming with you.”

“You know,” piped in Donovan. “You should keep track of your morgue practitioner, considering she’s a witness to the crime.” Something about the way Sally said ‘witness’ told Greg she meant to say something else entirely.

Scowling, he tried (and failed) not to grit his teeth, “Thank you for your input, Sargent.”

Despite Sherlock’s menacing sallowness, the corners of his mouth twitched up at the edge of Greg’s vision. However, his smugness had a limited life expectancy. Turning to face him, Greg Lestrade ignored the lump in his throat and inhaled, throwing the words into the open as if they tasted bad, “Sargent Donovan will be shadowing you for the duration of this investigation, Sherlock.”

For a split second, Sherlock just gaped at him before, “No.”

“Believe me, it wasn’t my idea, freak,” muttered Sally.

“I decline,” retorted Sherlock.

“Yeah well, this isn’t an offer it’s an order,” Greg snapped at the pair of them. “Standard procedure when dealing with a POI. You are both _adult_ professionals at the top of your respective fields and it’s about bloody time the pair of you behaved as such.”

Sally’s eyes found the floor while Sherlock’s glower remained on Greg as he spoke, “Now, somebody track down Molly Hooper!”

 

 

 

 

 

  ** _2011_**

****

**_“THAT WAS YOUR ORIGINAL PLAN?? YOU HAVE THE WORLD’S ONLY DEAD NOT DEAD CONSULTING DETECTIVE AS YOUR PET AND THAT’S YOUR PLAN?!_ **

**_“He isn’t my pet, Marley!”_ **

**_“He’s also standing right here,” Sherlock murmured._ **

It was sunrise. Well, Irene hoped it was. Either that or she was hallucinating the purple light skulking in through Marley’s window above the sink and she would prefer not to give Marley’s accusations of insanity any further fuel.

Irene walked over to the sink, grabbing a cup from the lilac cupboard to her left as she walked. The glass was cool under her fingers. She wasn’t really thirsty, but if she kept standing in the cramped living room between Marley and Sherlock’s sniping for a minute longer, she was going to collapse from exhaustion. She had to keep moving. _They had to keep moving._

From the corner of her eye, Irene sensed Sherlock and Marley’s own watching her toss back the glass of water in 3 gulps (maybe she had been thirsty).

“Remember when I asked you if you have a death wish and you said ‘no’? Your actions are so loud your words would deaf if they had ears!”

Sherlock and Marley flinched as Irene slammed the cup down into the sink. The glass clanged against the cheap metal, but Irene was disappointed in the lack of a shatter. It would have made her point better. She turned to face them.

“You said you’d help me, Mar,” Irene snapped. “That’s the plan Mr Holmes and myself need help with. If you’re questioning it, you’re not helping so-” Irene was interrupted by the buzz of a doorbell.

The three of them froze, everything suddenly stone except Irene’s pulse running up her throat.

“It’s too early for customers,” Marley breathed, followed immediately by Linley’s-

“THERE’S A MR TREVOR HERE TO SEE YOU!”

Irene and Sherlock swore in unison as Marley snatched her hoodie from the back of the sofa.

“Quick,” she hissed, throwing a blanket at Sherlock, “take him up to the roof.”

“I thought Linley sealed that after what happened at your 18th??!” Irene hissed back.

“She’s gotta smoke somewhere I can’t see her- quick, go!”

 

Edinburgh’s early mornings were a secret known only to those brave enough to shiver through them. At 7am, the sun is not so much a source of warmth as it is a dismal silver coin tinting the morning fog pink and painting the sides of buildings into pastel sketches without touching the temperature. The cool air burns through your lungs and steams in front of your nose at every breath, mixing with the fog that temporarily hides the fact that this city is not the only place on earth.

The rooftop above Marley’s apartment was a perfectly square island tucked away between the surrounding rooftops, the fog and the grey clouds always in residence just above the TV antennae that never touched the sky. While the wall edge standing between the rooftop and the drop down into the street was punctuated with herbs, succulents and cacti, bubbling through cracks like afterthoughts in the hand sized pots that contained them.

Irene Adler drank in the city below her, breathing in the cool air brought by the fog until she could no longer hear her heart over the traffic bustling 3 stories below her. The air smelled damp and ever so faintly of the mint plant beside where she was leaning on her forearms.

“Are you alright?”

Her neck clicked as she snapped her head upward, wheeling her eyes around to face Sherlock. She’d almost forgotten he was beside her.  Unusual, considering this time a year ago she had been so hyper aware of him, she’d considered burying her brain in soil so she could think clearly.

 She turned her head up to look at him, “How’s your shoulder?” she responded, nodding towards it.

“Bullet-less,” he answered.

Rolling her eyes, Irene let them wonder over his shirtless form next to her. The blanket Marley had thrown at them on the way up here only hid the goose pimples on his shoulders and arms, but Irene could still see them amongst the bruising on his chest. Shivering, she pulled her eyes back up to his chafed cheeks.

“I’m not apologising for your mistake,” she said, glaring at him. “Pout all you want.”

“I’m not angry you shot me,” Sherlock scowled.

Irene squeezed her eyes shut in the vain hope that her eyelids would keep the irritability from her voice, “I’m not in the mood to play deductions, Mr Holmes.”

“An interesting statement for someone so secretive,” he replied, his voice a high pitched snarl too viscous for the soft foggy sunrise around them.

Irene rounded on him, almost spitting a laugh out of her mouth in reply, “Says the detective currently faking his own death.”

“You didn’t tell me the Pit was being run by your ex!” he shot back. “And I have always told you what you needed to know,” he snapped. But Sherlock’s eyes suddenly seemed to retreat back from the glare he’d fixed her with and Irene saw his lip twitch nervously.

Arranging her lips into deadly smile, Irene knew he knew he’d said the wrong thing, but her shaken bones were too bruised, too exhausted, to forgive him.

“What I needed to know?” His words came steaming from her throat, but she kept her voice cool. “Was the fact that you intended to save my life optional information, then?”

The lump in Sherlock’s throat trembled toward his chin, but he kept his indignant expression resolute when he spoke, “You’re the only person I’ve ever met that’s ungrateful for the timing of their life being saved!”

“You’re the only person I’ve ever met who doesn’t understand why!”

Sherlock’s eyes widened, “You think after you pulled me out of Paris, I don’t understand-?” he hissed.

“No,” Irene snapped at him. “I don’t.”

Sherlock’s reply was choked by the sound of muffled rhythmic vibration hailing from somewhere in his trousers.

Her glower unfaltering, Irene watched as Sherlock pulled the phone (Irene preferred not to think from precisely where) up into the space between them. Breaking eye contact with him, Irene glanced down at the disposable cell’s screen. “U” flashed yellow in the space between them.

“Mycroft,” Sherlock muttered. “Must have missed the checkpoint.”

Irene dragged her cheeks upward into a sneer that Sherlock avoided looking at, as if her teeth were the piercing winter sun rising beyond the fog around them.

“You don’t understand, Mr Holmes, because despite the amount of time you spend brooding over your loneliness, you have never been alone.” She turned away from him.

“Well-” he took a breath. “Neither have you.”

Turning her head back in his direction, Irene threw an empty chuckle over her shoulder at him, “But I didn’t need to know that, did I?”

The air was suddenly colder and the vibrating hadn't ceased. “Answer that,” she said, sliding down the wall until she was sitting with her head leaning back on it, the chill in the mismatched bricks seeping through her leather jacket onto the back of her neck. “Tell your brother that you’re safe.”

Sherlock hit the end call button.

“I don’t have to tell him,” his voice was wary, “I only have to pick up the phone.” Irene resisted the urge to roll her head up to look at him.

“What happens if you don’t answer?” she asked, keeping her eyes on the roof of the tiny greenhouse 3 meters or so ahead of her.

“Nothing, for two hours, after which time if I haven’t contacted my brother, the phone sends my brother’s secret service my location and-”

“They rush to your rescue,” Irene yawned. “What if two hours is too late?”

“There’s a sensitive tracker in the phone, destroying the casing of the phone triggers it.”

Silence swallowed the conversation for a while. Well, a kind of silence. The kind that tinkers with traffic and chatters away at your teeth in the morning dew.

“Get up,” Sherlock ordered.

Irene pushed her head upright to frown up at him, “I beg your pardon?”

“You were knocked unconscious last night, for any future plan to go smoothly, I need to be 100% sure you can handle yourself.”

The bruise on Irene’s forehead protested dully as she raised her eyebrows at him, “Our first meeting can vouge for my ability to handle myself, Mr Holmes.”

“Perhaps, but social convention will require you to be clothed and I need to trust in your ability when it is without unnameable narcotics, or riding crops.”

“I just pulled a bullet out of your shoulder,” Irene pointed out.

“Then, this won’t take long. Get up.”

Irene fixed him with a glower strong enough to slice through the thin layer of fog thinning around them, but he was not kidding. With a sigh, Irene half staggered to her feet, wriggling her frozen toes inside her boots as she straitened up.

The rooftop was big in theory, but once one factored in the tiny greenhouse (Greenhut, Irene’s memory corrected her) in the middle of it, the trays and pots of plants and the 3 story plunge to the road, it suddenly seemed a lot smaller.

“What happened before you were knocked unconscious?” Sherlock asked, the steam of his breath dissolving as he spoke.

Folding her arms, Irene sniffed the cold minted air up through her nose before answering, “I was fighting my way out, broke a couple of ribs, then I got a lovely view of the inside of my eyelids sponsored by a wandering fist.”

“Did you have a weapon?”

“The rifle,” nodded Irene. She tried not to smile, “Do you want me to hit you?”

“No. I want you to defend yourself efficiently,” Sherlock replied. “You need to disable your assailants without weapons, assistance, or killing them.”

“Typically, I set a price before men ask me to do this kind of thing, Mr Holmes,” she purred, lifting her hand to expect her nails to irritate him.

Sherlock ploughed on as if she hadn’t spoken, “I’m going to attack you. Either prevent my assault entirely, or defend yourself in a way that would give you 5 seconds to run away.”

Irene sniggered, “Are you sure you don’t want to discuss a safe word?”

His lip quirked, “You forget, I’ve never begged for mercy in my life.”

What happened next was a series of breathless reflexes that Irene’s senses judged too blurred and automatic for instant registration. But when her mind caught up with her body, images flashed across her mind like a pulsing daydream.

Sherlock launching himself toward her, his fingers clenched around her ear, Irene yelping and doubling over, reaching up both her hands to fasten around his wrist – Irene twisted every atom in her body around. For a split second, Sherlock bent forward beneath her turn, but he was no brainless goon. He’d been smart enough to grab her with his left hand so even as she twisted out of his hair lock, she was still trapped between his body and the 3 story drop to the street below. His ankle hooked around her shin.

Refusing to be dragged to the ground alone, Irene hooked her foot around his ankle. The pair of them thudded to the concrete beside a cluster of parsley plants in a tangle of elbows, knees and grunts. Neither of them beneath the other, but Sherlock’s ankle was still a vice around her leg.

In the stumble, Sherlock had released her hair. Her hands now free, Irene wasted no time in shunning her elbow into Sherlock’s newly bullet-less shoulder. Screeching, he relented his ankle’s grip as his hands flew instinctively up to his wound, but Irene was quick. Sherlock only having time to groan as Irene settled her knee into his collarbone, pinning his free hand with her other knee and placed her hand over his mouth and nose.

“5, 4, 3, 2, 1,” she breathed, grinning over their panting. His breath was warm on her palm as she pulled her face away from his, his chest heaving against her kneecap. She lifted her hand away from his mouth and he gulped at the frosted air.

“You’re better without accessories, you know?” he half gasped. “Two free hands- you could knock me out in a second!”

“Don’t get all mushy on me now,” she laughed, getting to her feet and offering him a hand. Sherlock winced as she pulled him to his feet. “I’m sure you’d be a half decent opponent if you weren’t an invalid.”

A smile spoiled his grimace as he let go of her hand, “Feel better, then?”

Irene rolled her eyes, “Always the martyr, aren’t you, Mr Holmes?”

“Must be an exasperating trend among the dead,” he answered.

Chuckling away their panting, they were both leaning against the wall looking out over the Edinburgh’s jagged rooftops once more as the adrenaline settled in their veins.

The fog had almost completely cleared to reveal 9am life roaring dull and unthreatening beneath them as the buildings tried to pierce the overcast, now shining orange with the fully risen sun. Their breath still came steaming from their lungs into the morning, but the cool breeze barely tickled Irene’s flushed cheeks as they stood side by side among Linley's scattered population of pot plants .

“Want to know what the secret to deduction is?” Sherlock asked, suddenly.

“Being smarter than everyone else?” Irene suggested, not without sarcasm.

Sherlock shook his head, “The secret to outsmarting anyone in anything, Miss Adler, is not thinking you are smarter than everyone else. It is knowing your opponent always believes they are.”

“Irene!” The pair of them both turned in the direction of the shout to find Linley, clutching potted cacti in her slender fingers and a frown creasing her temple. “Marlene needs you, girl.”

Irene moved towards the cubby hole of a door that lead back down into Marley’s apartment with Sherlock stepping on her shadow. But as Irene opened it, Linley held out a prickly succulent between Irene and Sherlock, “Just Irene,” she mused. Irene stole a glance up at Sherlock. “Go on now, beautiful girl,” Linley cooed, her voice completely absent of _polite_ suggestion. “I’ll have a chat here to your friend until you and Mar are done,” she smiled.

 

 

 

 

 _ **Present Day**_  

**_Having anxiety isn’t the same as being nervous, telling the opposite to someone who has anxiety is the equivalent of telling Willy Wonka his interest in chocolate is a worthwhile hobby, or a drug addiction is an aesthetic choice. Nervousness is a choice, anxiety pours from the mind like blood from a heart. It is a survival instinct with insomnia that convinces you it’s necessary to want to tear yourself up to live. Fight or flight isn't a choice, but a war constantly raging and never won._ **

Molly Hooper had lived with anxiety for as long as she could remember. As she got older, it got a little wiser and learned that the world was not trying to swallow her up every day. Her little victories in recent years, standing up to herself and Sherlock, had not gone unnoticed by herself, or the others.

But even little victories couldn’t distract her from this.

Knuckles white, Molly unclenched her trembling fists from the rim of the sink. The water cooled the metal so her fingers stung.

Molly’s brain clasped at the cold stab in her fingers, the logical part of her mind ran to it enough to pull her head up and face her reflection.

The bags under her eyes aged her 20 years and were shot with blood. Jim’s voice crawled from the memory of last night’s conversation, up her spine, into her ear.

_“Keep an eye on things and I won’t feed yours’ or your little pal’s to Toby.”_

Molly shivered, raising her trembling wrist to look at her watch.

“Shit!” Gathering up her handbag, Molly dragged her fingers through her hair, twisting it all up into a bun tight enough to pull the tiredness back from her face. With one last splash of cold water, Molly blinked icy droplets from her eyes, shuffled out of the restroom doors in the direction of the morgue and knocked Sally Donovan into the opposite wall.

Molly’s handbag hurdled from her arm as she jumped back, “Oh my god!”

“And I found you,” Sally muttered straightening her grey blazer with a grimace.

“I’m so sorry,” Molly swallowed. “God, I-”

“Make it home last night?” Sally cut across her, frowning as her eyes ran the length of Molly’s figure and crossing her arms over her clearance badge dangling from her neck. Crouching down, Molly used collecting up her bag as an opportunity to compose herself. Straightening up, she swung her bag over her shoulder, hoping the rustling of the act covered up her sharp intake of breaths.

“Yeah,” Molly replied, pinning a smile to her cheeks. “Slept rubbish, though. Had to get up half an hour early to catch the tube because I left my car at Baker Street.” When Sally’s stance didn’t falter she added, “You?”

Sally turned her body away from Molly and began walking back to the morgue. Molly tripped over her feet into step beside her, pulse jumping on her every other step as Sally’s arms remained folded. Molly resisted the twitch to stare at her feet.

“Fine enough,” answered Sally, finally. She cleared her throat, “Now, Anderson will be your shadow for the duration of Scotland Yard’s investigation. As you are a person of interest and an assistant in this case, he will help you and report all your activities during this period to Inspector Lestrade. Do you understand?”

“Shouldn’t you not tell me that in case I try and hide something now I know you’re watching me?” Molly blurted out. _Shut up._

“The detective inspector wanted you and Sherlock to be informed,” Sally replied robotically, staring straight ahead.

The next few minutes were filled by the heels of their shoes echoing down the empty hospital corridor. Molly greeted co-workers as she passed them, shrugging when they asked her why she was in so early and did her best to appear more on the tired side of so anxious she wanted to scream for 20 minutes straight.

When they reached the morgue, Molly felt her body disentangle itself from anxiety for a split second as every atom in her body rejoiced at the daily familiarity of her work place. But the relief was short-lived when her eyes found the blood covered couple, glowing white in the harsh fluorescents on the slabs in the centre of the room.

Molly looked away and had hardly busied herself with storing her things in the storage room adjacent to the lab and pulling on her lab coat, when Anderson’s voice made her jump.

“Morning,” he leaned on the door frame, careful to keep his blood covered hands raised.

“Morning,” Molly muttered, trying to keep her breathing smooth.

“Bit jumpy, are we?” Anderson asked in a voice that made the words feel more like they were composed of probing rods rather than letters.

Shrugging, Molly skidded over his inquiry, “Have you done the autopsy yet?” she asked, digging around in the pocket of her lab coat for some rubber gloves. Anderson’s bottom lip quirked upward.

“Done the male. You’re going to help me with the female.”

“Do we need to extract DNA for identification?” Molly asked, moving forward to usher them both out of the storage lab and back into the main mortuary. “The blood?”

“It isn’t blood,” answered Anderson as they reached the bodies. Molly wrinkled her nose, more at the sight than anything else, since there seemed to be no fluids in them to wreak in death.

“It’s paint,” Molly flinched at Sherlock’s voice directly behind her, “I believe the shade is ‘candy apple’”

Now beside her, Sherlock gave her an acknowledging sort of head twitch.

Anderson rolled his eyes, “Thank you for letting the shade be known to the public in case any of us were inspired to decorate,” Anderson gestured to the bodies.

Sherlock countered his remark through a clenched jaw, “That shade of paint has not been sold in London since the 1960s. Nowhere sells it. You can’t even buy it online.”

“Seems odd. You can usually find anything online,” Molly thought aloud.

“The paint was toxic. So any and all units of it were re-called and destroyed.”

“So, what have we got?” Lestrade joined their little huddle beside the bodies, Donovan on his heels.

“2 bodies covered in a paint that shouldn’t exist apparently,” replied Anderson.

“How did the autopsy on the male go?”

“He’s mid-30s, non-smoker, but judging from the arterial scarring, he had heart problems. It’s likely he had a heart attack.”

“Conveniently in time for someone to stuff his skull full of dead rat?” Sherlock scowled.

“Keep the peace,” Lestrade muttered warily. “We have to find out how they were killed.”

“No we don’t,” said Sherlock. “This is a message, not a murder. The positioning of the bodies, their last known location and the paint is far more important.”

Greg looked like he wanted to retaliate, but after a sigh he thought better of it.

“Donovan, you and Sherlock go investigate the paint situation. Whoever set all this up had to get it from somewhere, I want a report every hour.”

“Yeah boss,” nodded Sally. “Come on, freak.”

Molly watched Sherlock’s entire body bristle at the address as he and Sally headed towards the door.

“Sherlock?” Greg called after him.

“Yes?” Sherlock turned in the act of holding the door open mutinously for Sally.

“What did you mean by a message? Message for who?”

Sherlock rolled his bagged and bloodshot eyes, “Me, inspector.” 

***

Sergeant Sally Donovan’s current residence was inside her worst nightmare. London’s morning rush traffic may as well have been an endless glorified parking lot, for the amount of ground she had covered between the hospital and where she was currently stuck behind a double decker.

 **“** This would not have happened if we’d turned right at the roundabout,” Sherlock muttered. Sally’s fingers clenched around the steering wheel.

She grit her teeth, “Yes, thank you for your contribution.”

The mid morning sun hadn’t yet breached the cloud but April’s ambitious humidity had the bold out braving the day in shorts. Sally observed the amount of people in the car’s surrounding hers with their heads buried in laptops, tablets and phones. A small part of her counted the penalty fines, while most of her groaned at the complete normalisation of enduring the sluggish crawl through London’s CBD.

As if in echo of her train of thought, Sherlock grimaced in the passenger seat to her left. Bounding forward from his seat, he kicked the car door open and, quicker than Sally could blink, was striding through the congestion of vehicles surrounding them. Shouting out to him was futile, but that didn’t stop her.

Littering the underside of her breath with as many swearwords she could think of, Sally heaved herself out of the car in pursuit of Lestrade’s favourite freak – radioing some local traffic cops to deal with her car as she jogged to catch up with him.

When she reached him, they were striding up the sidewalk, neither of them dishing out much concern for the civilian crowd complaining as they carved through it.

“I’m your shadow. Know what that means?” Sally snarled.

“I can lose you if it’s dark enough?” he replied.

“It means neither of us go anywhere without the other on this case and you do nothing I don’t report back to the Detective Inspector, freak.”

Sherlock’s gasp was unadulterated mockery made audible, “Oh no! Don’t tell on me Sergeant Donovan!” Then, a little darker, “It nearly killed me last time.”

The set in Sally’s jaw only rivalled the force of her grip on Sherlock’s arm, bringing both of them to a dead stop. The crowds grumbling and muttering as they flowed around the obstruction of Sally and Sherlock’s unmoving glares, but Sally was far too preoccupied trying not to hit her POI to notice they were an inconvenience. Collecting herself and looking around, she yanked Sherlock to one side, almost throwing him into the glass window of H&M beside them.

“Believe it or not, you and I are on the same team,” Sally hissed. “You’re not exactly my ideal teammate either, but we don’t cooperate and neither of us get to be on this case. You’re already on thin ice after you killed a man in cold blood, there’s no room left to push Greg and you’re big brother is out of strings to pull.

The scowl cutting his face didn’t waver, but he shifted his weight to pull his arm out of Sally’s grip. Sally continued, “Work with me and you stay on the case,” she finished.

Sherlock pressed his lips into a line, as if he needed to chew up her statement before mounting a retort.

“Stop calling me, freak,” he said, his voice sharp, “and I’ll keep my commentary to the case.”

It was a moment before Sally realised what he was saying, and a lot of will power to resist blinking her way to comprehending the fact that Sherlock Holmes was offering to filter his remarks on her role in his arrest all those years ago.

If Sally didn’t know him better (and this comment was a disturbing indicator that she didn’t) she’d almost say it was something like an acknowledgement. The acknowledgement that she had just been doing her job when she had reported him to the commissioner... An acknowledgement that her 7 year old code name for him was… hurtful.

Sally swallowed back the last 5 years of her life that had just re-hashed themselves in her mind. Mere seconds had passed since he had spoken and she heard a logical voice somewhere in her head nudge the next words off her lips,

“Yeah,” she agreed. She looked away from him, “Fair call.”

Sherlock dug his hands into the pockets of his coat. Shaking her coils away from her face, Sally plucked a hair tie from her own pocket to pull her hair up into a knot against the wind.

“Let’s get back to the car,” she suggested automatically.

“Actually,” Sherlock pointed out, “the last place that sold that shade of paint is a family owned hardware shop two streets over. We can walk.”

Sally hitched her belt back up where it had slid in her pursuit of him, “After you, then.”

***

Armoured Amenities was a hardware shop nestled uncomfortably between two bland low-rise office buildings. The one story store stuck ouyout (quite literally) like a quaint aqua blue thumb amongst the standard metro of the CBD.

“The owner of the place is-”

“Phillip Coleman,” Sally answered. “4th generation business owner. Nothing on his record.”

Sherlock’s lips disappeared into his mouth. Must have been a physical effort for him to bite back the insult his brain prepared for her. He took a stiff breath.

“Except for a trespassing ticket two months ago,” Sherlock said. Sally raised an eyebrow, but waited a split second for his explanation. “No clue as to where, the police got a tip off from a civilian who owned the private property he was trespassing on and the civilian remained anonymous.”

Nodding, Sally fingered her detective badge and the warrant Lestrade had handed her in her belt, before holding the door open for Sherlock and stepping inside the cramped shop.

The inside was cool, air-conditioned. Fresh paint pushed its way up her nostrils. Despite the haphazard tinkling of the bell arming the door, she called out.

“Hello?”

No one answered back, the shop appearing all but empty of human life other than herself and Sherlock. Mismatched shelves of every kind lined every available space, each of them keen and brimming and bulging with cans, jars and tubes of colour. Above her head, old splattered brushes with bright dried tips hung from string stuck to the ceiling, creating cloudy patterns of colour in the overcast light that found its way into the shop between the stacks of paint. Dried splashes even decorated the floor. Sally Donovan was no interior design expert, but she had to admire the consistent theme.

From the corner of her eye, Sherlock wondered away from her towards the shelves full of red. Sally moved towards the old wooden desk in the centre of the place. It was embossed with golden leaves down its curled legs and the faded green register that sat on it would have been a quaint relic 30 years ago. Sally tapped her fingers on the silver bell that sat to its left.

A clatter of metal on metal jerked her head around to the right. Stumbling through a door Sally had missed due to the tower of paint cans that surrounded it, came Phillip Coleman. His skin was a few shades darker than Sally’s and his coils were going grey at the roots.

“Just a moment-!” he pleaded, his voice startlingly Scottish. Sherlock found his way to her side as Mr Coleman freed himself from his armful of cans, straightened his (rather tight) washed-out red polo shirt and wove his way through his wares to his desk.

“Mr Coleman,” said Sally, trying not to relish how much better authority tasted with Sherlock Holmes silent next to her. “I’m Sergeant Sally Donovan with Scotland Yard and this is my consultant Mr Sherlock Holmes,” she held up badge with the warrant beside it. “We have authority to search your business.”

Mr Coleman’s eyes somehow widened even further as Sherlock shoved his phone screen into the man’s face.

“Have you sold, traded or given away this particular shade of red recently?” asked Sherlock. Blinking, the man pulled Sherlock’s phone down away from his face and squinted at the screen.

Coleman sniggered, “you investigating a cold case or something, mate?” He snorted. “Haven’t sold this shit since I was a teen- long-time back. Still remember when me dad had to deal with the re-call. Shit turned toxic, even dissolved brickwork, some people event spent a bit of time in hospital. Something about a specific unknown chemical reaction when it came into contact with Lino or some such. I ain’t a chemist. Non-explosive though so all the re-called ones were burned off. But yeah, haven’t sold it or traded it in years.” Shrugging, he handed Sherlock back the phone. “Sorry.”

“Is it possible you have a record of who that paint was sold to?” Sally asked. “To re-call it, there must be one.”

Phillip Coleman screwed up his face as if he could squeeze the memories from the depths of his cerebral cortex, “Maybe…” he said slowly. “In me dad’s old files out back. I’d need a bit to dig ‘em up tho, that’s goin back some 50 years, that is.”

“That’s-”

“I’ll find them,” Sherlock cut in, already halfway to the door Sally had seen Phillip emerge from.

“Oi-! Steady on-!” Phillip stumbled over his previously dropped cans in Sherlock’s wake, but Sally beat him through the door.

The backroom was barely bigger than 2 office cubicles and was overcrowded with rusted filing cabinets and the smell of rat poison. Thankfully, Sally observed, each one bedecked with a withering label detailing a month and year. Sherlock was already crouched before the 1960s, his fingers flying through the papers. Sally moved to stand in the doorway.

“Hey-” Mr Coleman started.

“Please don’t interfere with police investigation, Mr Coleman. Wait outside.” But Sally was frowning when she walked over to where Sherlock was rifling through the cabinets.

“66, 65,” he muttered. “January, March- UH HUH!” he yanked out a thick stained yellow folder and flipped it open.

Sally snatched it from his grip.

“Wha-!”

“This is a police investigation and you’re a person of interest,” she stated, flicking through the stack in the binder. The unfortunate Candy Apple customers were listed alphabetically. Sally guessed the mark next to their name meant that their purchase had been successfully refunded.

Gripping the binder tight, she confirmed her theory with Coleman, told him to stay put and escorted herself and Sherlock from the shop. The door bells announcing their exit had barely concluded their tinkling before Sherlock rounded on her.

“This is a police investigation on which I am consultant. Show me the files.”

Sally’s fingers tightened around the folder, pulling it closer towards her chest.

“First,” she said, ensuring there was nothing but authority in her voice. “First, you tell me what you know.”

“Anything in a particular?” he groaned. “Or just a brief history of wasting time?”

“You’re usually keen to solve cases, but you’re body language screams desperate and I have a feeling that has to do with the fact that you think those bodies are a message to you. Who from? What about? And if you can’t answer any of that you better have good reason or else I give this to Inspector Lestrade to sort through - at his own pace.”

Sherlock’s shoulder’s rose and fell rapidly as his eyes burned down into her own. But Sally froze her resolution in ice.

Fist unclenching and re-clenching at his side, Sally glimpsed the bruising on his knuckles. A thought tiptoed over her thoughts that he looked thinner than she remembered and, like Miss Hooper, his clothes were unchanged from the night before. Sally shook herself mentally.

We all had personal lives, that didn’t excuse obstructing murder investigations.

 _Unless it’s undermining your own work,_ whispered a nasty voice in the back of her memory.

“Well, then?” she barked.

His lips scrunched up in lieu of a response. She sighed, “Have it your way,” she shrugged. “You always do,” she muttered, before turning away and pulling her sunglasses from her belt. The sun had finally managed to break through the clouds and it glinted proudly off the cars dordling by. Keeping the folder gripped tight under her arm, Sally reached for her mobile with her free hand.

“Sally, wait-” Sherlock bounded around to block the path in front of her. “There are things I can’t tell you. I can’t tell you and I can’t tell anyone because I’d be breaking-” his face twisted as he grappled around for the words. “It’s too dangerous,” he settled on. Sally did her best to not look at him like he was crazy as he kept speaking. “But most of it I can’t say because-” he broke off, grimacing as if the words were scratching their way out of his throat. “I can’t tell you,” he dragged a hand through his hair and squeezed his eyes shut. His next words came in a rush, as if he was trying to force them out before he lost his nerve to say them, “I can’t tell you because- because I don’t remember.”

And Sally’s jaw dropped at the exact moment her mobile flashed Lestrade’s name in her hand.

 

 

 

 

  ** _2011_**

**_Linley Parring knew a lot about caring for cacti, succulents and selling antique books, but her real age had always eluded her. She supposed she was born on a certain day, at a certain time to be standing on an Edinburgh rooftop with Sherlock Holmes right now. But bugger it all if she knew when it was. She had a rough idea given quite generously by the silver tangling roots of her hair and the sunspots that kissed her fingers and the ache in her bones…_ **

**_But a number? Nope._ ** **Her first memory was counting plastic forks in the brig of an ocean liner, while her mother prayed between coughing up the scarlet flecks of her own insides. Linley hadn’t even known her age then, if she was honest. There was a date on all the documents she’d managed to scavenge, but she’d only picked it because it had been her mother’s last date. At any rate, the way Linley saw it, was this:**

**People constantly grow, age and change. Even if she had birthday, she would be entirely different the day, the minute – the second after it. That was her comfort and her personal brand of peace, to never be still because she wasn’t.**

Irene’s broken boy cleared his throat, disturbing her reverie, “Is Trevor still here?”

Linley bent further over her tray of cacti at the side of her greenhouse, before plucking a bulbous pink topped one from the middle and holding out to him.

“Hold this,” she said, placing it in his hands without looking at him.

They were standing just outside her small Greenhouse on the rooftop. Well, Greenhut as a 10 year old Marlene had once bequeathed it. Surrounding the greenhouse were trays and weathered trestle tables bulging with the results Linley’s potted succulent habit. The sun grinning feebly down on it all through the mist.

Drawing her black cardigan a little tighter over her scrubs, Linley pulled the Greenhut’s key from her pocket, shook it into the lock and sidled inside. It’s small round interior was far too small to fit both herself and Irene’s broken boy. Something which she was glad of, owing to his smell. The odour of blood, of bruising and of chaos. Not to mention the distinctive week long absence of a shower. Linley silently thanked the soil and herbs for the little relief they gave.

Defying the laws of physics, the Greenhut’s insides seemed inconceivably smaller than it is outside. This was partly due to the fact that, of course, it was logically somewhat smaller. But mostly because the four levels of shelving, twisting and teeming green in the glassy sun only allowed standing room.

When he spoke again, he was leaning in the ivory covered frame of the tiny Greenhut. He repeated the question, “Is Trevor down there with them?”

Linley reached out for her cactus and he returned it, cool and damp, into her outstretched palm. Humming the Beatles, she shrugged at his question and tucked the cacti into a place between 3 tulips and a fern. Leaning down, she picked out a blanket from the shelf beneath her plants and handed it to him.

“Put that on,” she half hummed. “It’s too cold for you to be showing off your physique. Besides, Irene is downstairs,” she giggled.

The broken boy made no attempt at responding, but wrapped the blanket obediently over his battered but goose-pimple ridden arms.

“Not exactly ideal climate for cacti,” he observed. Linley pursed her lips, pausing on the chorus of _Here Comes The Sun_.

“Yet, here they grow,” she said, smiling to herself and resuming her humming. “Resilient things always grow where they are not supposed to,” she mused after a moment.

 A few minutes passed this way; Linley rearranging her flora and the broken boy seething with all his unspoken questions.

Linley turned to face him on the pretence of grabbing the small pale of water resting on the shelf beside him, “Bet she didn’t mention me, did she?”

The boy’s eye twitched, but he kept quiet. She grinned, “Figured out who I am yet, boy? If you are who she’s lying for, you should’ve done. At least, that’s what the tabloids say is your superpower,” she chuckled through her teeth. “But then, they say you’re a gravestone now too. So which is it? Are you a lie, or are you a corpse?” she laughed again, “Or both?”

The boy unhitched himself from the ivy he had been leaning upon and drew himself up with barely a flinch.

“Your name is Linley Parring. You own the bookshop beneath our feet. Marlene is your daughter, but she’s fatherless and, given the complete lack of male clothing I’ve been offered, I’d say she’s always been. You’re dressed in surgical scrubs, but they’re too faded for you to be fulltime. New uniforms are issued to either full time or part time staff so you’re a casual shift worker. But most likely you just use hospital contacts to smuggle hospital grade drugs and sell them, either online or at places like the Pit. The bookshop is an ideal front for hiding such contraband, I applaud you.”

Linley licked her smile, “Do you hide your…” she rolled the word between her teeth, “contraband in books, boy?”

He blinked and looked away, muttering something along the lines of, “Not anymore.”

“I appreciate your truths,” Linley sighed. “But Irene’s story is her own to tell. No exchange between you and me will change that.”

“No story exists in a vacuum,” he offered.

Linley waved his words away, “Don’t get snippy with me just cos you cannot see her the way you do others. When kids like Irene Adler grow in places where people like you and me dwell too. They learn how to hide in their own skin,” Linley hoped her voice would be neutral, but her words hung too proud between her and the boy. He raised a singed eyebrow at her.

“People like you and me?” he repeated.

Linley yawned without looking around from watering her herbs, “Your name is Sherlock William Scott Holmes. You’re supposed to be dead, but no doubt your high and mighty brother engineered your escape. You’re goin after Jim Moriarty’s network alone. At least, that’s what you want your brother to think. But he don’t know about your,” she paused, carefully composing the right word, “alliance with Irene. This is the first time you’ve been in love-” he cringed as if that word stung him, but Linley continued,

“You’re a detective, not necessarily because you care for the greater good of others (which you do more than you would like), but you know it’s the only profession in which others will forgive you for appearing cold to the world, usin your work as an excuse to keep yourself isolated, to place yourself above the pain. But while you enjoy aspects of rising above it all, the price of seeing everything is knowing everything, isn’t it?”

The pale colour sinking into his cheeks made his eyes jump out. Especially among her greenery and the golden light trickling through the cracks in the glass.

“You learned a little too late that exposing yourself to the world’s pain doesn’t numb you to it. But you’re too proud appearing untouchable and clever to admit your failings. So you seek a kind of quiet in smoke and the needle points that bruise your knuckles when your blogging best friend is out,” She poured the last of her water over the basil in her herb tray. “You shoulda considered clairvoyance, boy.” Linley shrugged, “Sometimes, you save as many people. You wouldn’t believe the amount of criminals wantin to know their future. I even branched out into hypnotherapy. Help with the trauma and all that jazz.”

The words came staggering off his lips, “I don’t believe in the supernatural.”

“Ha! Bit rich comin’ from a ghost isn’t it?”

He rolled his eyes, “I don’t believe in providing people with false hope.”

“And yet it’s what brings them clients you deem too boring to your door. I’m wondering do you send ‘em all away because you know deep down that they are doomed?”

This statement chased the smug smile from his cheeks. Silence swallowed the air as if it was born off the scent of the flowers and herbs she’d just finished watering.  Dusting water off her fingers, Linley shooed him from her path out the door.

“I ain’t trying to grill you, boy. Don’t fret.” She locked the door to her Greenhut and turned to face him,  “Point is the lives you are bound to, the choices you make - your intention, explained or otherwise, matters none. Only your impact. You might intend to keep her safe, you might intend to forgive, and you might even intend to protect those you love. But that, dear boy,” she reached up to glide her fingertips over the puddle of bruising around his eye, “will not matter.”

“LINELY!” Irene Adler’s extraordinarily cross shout sliced through Linley’s hearing aid. She aimed a wink at Sherlock, before dropping her hand to pull her cardigan snugger around herself and spinning her head around. Her body soon followed suit.

“Just checkin his breaks and bruises, beautiful girl,” Linley purred. Why being old made lies so much more convincing to people, she’d never know. Well, people that weren’t Irene Adler. But her suspicion passed, fleeting as a fly’s shadow.

“The meeting’s tonight,” she barked at Sherlock. “But we’ll need to change to the original plan.”

 

 

Back in Marley’s tiny living room, Linley was perched on her daughter’s faded green sofa, fingering aimlessly through a wrinkling trash magazine as she listened to Irene’s plan. Marley stood beside Irene, arms folded so tight she might have been physically holding her heart in her chest. Meanwhile, Sherlock stood still as a gargoyle, his back against Marley’s lilac cupboards and a Lineley’s scratchy brown blanket around his shoulders.

“Okay so you said you and Mr Holmes here were setting a trap for the puppet masters, or whatever,” Marley asked. “What did you mean?”

Irene looked at Sherlock, not asking for permission, but asking for his blessing. Eyes blazing, he answered with a curt nod. This was all highly sensitive Intel, after all.

“Moriarty’s network is too large even for him to run it all,” Irene started. “So, he has puppets that control different factions.”

“Hang on,” Marley interrupted. “Isn’t that risky? Couldn’t they just lock him out?”

“Use your head, Marlene,” Linley sighed without looking up from the two page spread of Angelina and Brad’s outdated baby joy. “He’ll have blackmail on them and diplomatic immunity for himself.”

Nodding, Irene continued. “What myself and my-” she cleared her throat, “friend here’s original plan entailed was simply a headcount.”

“Come again?” asked Linley.

Irene clarified, “For my friend’s attempts to dismantle Jim Moriarty’s to be any version of efficient, he needs to know who he’s looking for.”

Linley’s single frown line deepened, “But he doesn’t need that now?”

Irene shook her head, “It isn’t enough to know heads if you don’t know how they’re whispering.” Irene looked over at Marley. Unfolding her arms, she stepped forward.

“Irene’s had a  plan to help you, Mr Holmes. Because she knew you were tied up with what your brother’s government expected from you.”

“From personal experience,” Irene muttered, shoving her hands in the pocket of her jacket.

“So,” Marley took a breath, “Irene tasked me with gaining control of the Pit through her own and my mother’s contacts. This also gave me time to understand the encrypted communication system the network uses. Once the two of you did what you had to do in Paris, she was to convince you to come here to the Pit. She didn’t tell you about me because in case you were caught, she and I could continue with the dismantlement.”

“I’m aware I’m a liability,” Sherlock stated with a hint of something like bitterness in his voice. “It’s why I am dead.”

“Doesn’t change the fact that you’re you and you are the most wanted man in the network you’re trying to destroy,” Irene replied.

“Yes. That’s why I enlisted your help as eyes and ears.”

Irene scowled, “I’m not your soldier, Mr Holmes. Nor your poster girl.”

“Hold up,” Linley cut across their bickering. “What’s this Paris business?”

Irene tore her glare off Sherlock, “For this to work, Mr Holmes and I had to attack multiple parts of the network.”

“Ah,” Linley said, flipping the magazine shut and sliding it across the table. “So, you could make it look like a kind of mutiny.”

Irene, Marley and Sherlock nodded, “More or less. No one can dismantle that network by themselves.” Irene tried not to smile, “But it’s an empire that can and will crumble from within.”

“And just how do the three of you intend to bring this about?” Linley asked.

“Trevor heads up the majority of the network as is,” answered Marley. “After they attacked Paris and now the Pit, he’ll summon all of Europe’s puppets and the rest to the shadows to expose the traitors.”

“He trusts Marley, but has never seen her unhooded or not painted. We have been switching whilst talking to Trevor for the last two months. So I will pose as Marley at the summons and…” Irene trailed off before pinning a smirk to her cheeks, “cause some trouble.”

“We’ll all be someone who is meant to be there,” interjected Marley. “Until he realises we’re not.”

Linley shook her head, looking up from the magazine around at them all, “Chaos is not weapon, children,” she warned. “And it is not a weapon that can be wielded by good intent. If you breed battle among demons, you bring hell on all. These people will destroy each other, yes. But they will not care who they kill in the crossfire.”

“That’s why,” Irene took a deep breath and glued her eyes to Linley to keep Sherlock out of her peripheral vision, “We’re going to steal the encryption code by which the entire network communicates so we can control the damage- Well, I am.”

The room was still. For a moment, time seemed to desert the place, as if Irene’s words and the unadulterated shock they heralded had chased time from the room. Nothing moved. Nothing, but the bruises on Sherlock’s chest as it began swell and fall in time his rapid breathing. Marley’s eyes shuffled sideways between her mother and Irene, but Irene just waited for time to return to the room.

When it did, it arrived in the form of Sherlock and Marley’s unanimous, “NO!”

“Absolutely not-” Sherlock spluttered.

“I wasn’t asking anyone’s permission.”

“My response,” he ground his teeth, striding across the room to stand beside her, “is still no. I needed your help in Paris. I let you help me last night. But you’re asking me to let you go swimming in a tank full of starving, paranoid sharks!”

She rounded on him, balling her hands into fists, “This isn’t a proposal. This is our only option. You’ve told me time and again, how this dismantlement mission is nearly impossible for you and that you will keep me safe and out of any government’s reach. The only way for you to do any of that is helping me with this.”

Irene could almost hear his brain crackling, his eyes sparking, boring into hers as he searched and searched for a flaw in her logic. But it was Linley who broke tension.

Rising from the sofa, she walked around the coffee table to rest her silken palms on Irene’s cheeks. Like her daughter, Linley was only a fraction taller than Irene. But it was enough of a height difference to make her feel small between her fingers.

“If you do dis and fail, beautiful girl,” she whispered in her unchecked Jamaican mannerism, speaking as if they were the only two people in the room. “You will destroy yourself.”

Irene lifted her hands to take Linley’s and pull them down from her cheeks to hold them between them both. From the corner of her eye, Sherlock bowed his head and Marley became suddenly fascinated with the dirt under the fingernails of her right hand.

Squeezing Linley’s hands, Irene ran her thumb over the slight arthritic swelling in Linley’s knuckles, breathing in the woman’s familiar scent of soil and expired perfume. Irene tried to ignore how comforting it smelled, how comforting Linley had always smelled. Half Irene’s senses buried themselves in her for a moment, in the same way you squeeze your toes into sand.

“I died, L,” she whispered. “But if I’m to spend my life hiding from the living, I will fight for the destruction of the people that killed me.” 

“You were saved, child,” Linley breathed back.

“For more than a career as a ghost,” Irene answered, gently pulling her fingers from Linely’s.

Irene stood back and looked around the room. “I have tried to protect myself from men and puppets and shadows my whole life and I have owed debts to shadows and puppets and men my whole life. Now,” she smiled, “they’ll need protecting from me.” When no one said anything she added, “Come on, Mr Holmes. We have a heist to prepare for.”

 

 

 

 

  ** _Present Day..._**

**_Sweat slid cool between Molly Hooper’s eyebrows and off the edge of her nose. Unfortunately, her hand was preoccupied in that it was buried half deep in a dead woman’s heart._ **

“Verdict, Miss Hooper?” Anderson called over his shoulder from tending to the cadaver beside her.

“Only a heart in this one too,” Molly confirmed. Her hand came free of the female’s insides with discomforting ease. Corpses this fresh should still be retaining fluid. Yet the only thing they retained was a perfectly clean skeleton, a heart and (so far) chunks of dead rat.

It was well into the afternoon, though it was hard to discern time in the windowless morgue. The police had stuck tarpaulin over any window into the room to prevent curious eyes.

Molly raised a sleeve to wipe the sweat off her brow, “So, both bodies are clean. Any DNA matches?”

Anderson shook his head just as the Inspector Lestrade came shuffling through the morgue’s double doors, almost dropping his (at least 10th) mug of coffee as he shoved his phone back into his pocket.

“Anything?” he asked.

“Nothing of use,” Grumbled Anderson. “Just a load of uncooperative corpse.”

“Sergeant Donovan and Sherlock are on their way back. When they get here we’re going to open up the other skull.”

Anderson straightened up, “But, sir, you said-”

“I have two cadavers that are so clean they shouldn’t even exist, despite the fact they’re fresh and no certain cause of death. There was something in one head, there’s bound to be something in the other and if this is a message for Sherlock he’s gonna tell us what it is.”

 

10 minutes later, they were all clustered over the head of the unnamed male corpse. Molly bit her lip. She had overheard Anderson and Inspector Lestrade complaining that there wasn’t even a Missing Persons out for them. Anywhere. They were not missed or being searched for as Sherlock, tongue between his teeth, silently sliced the skin of the male’s temple.

As with the female, there was no sound. No fluids. The only movement, the parting of the skin in the wake of the scalpel between Sherlock’s thumb and index finger.

Prizing away the empty skin, this time there was no sack of dead rat. Molly, Donovan, Anderson, Greg and Sherlock all leaned forward. Glistening amongst the dampened inner layer of the epidermis was a note and a four leaf clover. Molly dared a glimpse up at Sherlock. His cheeks were paler than the cadaver he’d just partially beheaded and while everyone else’s breath seemed to have halted at the sight, Sherlock’s was sprinting through his nostrils.

Swallowing, he reached a gloved hand forward and plucked the note from the cranium wall. With everyone’s eyes fastened on him, he unfolded the postcard sized note… and pulled his eyebrows down into a frown.

“What?” Lestrade asked, breathing heavy beside him. His furrowed brow steadfast as Sherlock showed him what was on the note. Opposite them, Molly played with her fingers, straining her neck in a failed attempt to read the note. Lestrade returned Sherlock’s bewilderment,

“The old hospital?” he asked.

Rolling her eyes, Sally snatched the note from Sherlock. But she was still too angled away from Molly for her to see the note’s contents until-

“The abandoned one, north of the Thames?” she asked, her voice more confirming than curious.

Sherlock nodded.

“Sounds like an ambush,” grumbled Lestrade.

Sherlock snatched the note back from Sally’s hand, “I’ll take a cab.”

Scrunching the note up, he pocketed it, backed himself away from them all and bounded towards the doors.

With a surprising amount of power, Sally grabbed Sherlock’s arm. His whole body jerked to a halt. Snapping around to glare at Sally, Sherlock tried to wrench his arm free.

Sherlock’s voice was close to a snarl, “Unhand me, Sergeant.”

“If this is some kind of set up-” 

Quick as the shiver in the fluorescents above their heads, Sherlock twisted himself out of Sally’s grip. Molly’s mouth fell open as Sally’s shoulder was pulled downward. Yelping, Sally released Sherlock’s arm and he half leaped toward the door.

As quickly as the chaos had happened it dissolved into nothing but the squeak of the swinging doors echoing off the walls. Molly removed her hand from her mouth, burying her bitten nails into her palms and hiding them in her pocket.

Greg was hanging his head in his hands, “Follow him Donovan,” he groaned. “Keep your distance and call for backup at any sign of trouble.”

Eyes blazing, cheeks flushed, teeth clamped, Sally nodded and left the morgue. Anderson turned to Greg.

“Pack up and clock off for the day, Anderson.”

“Sir, I-”

“That’s an order!

Bowing his head, Anderson shuffled torward the storage room where all their personal belongs were being kept. Greg waited until his footsteps were hidden behind the storage room door.

“Grab your stuff. You’re done for the day too.”

Molly licked her lips, “Greg, I-”

He cut across her, “You're a POI. I’m your police escort. Grab your things, we’re on the road in 3.”

Molly's insides shrunk back against her spine. Hanging her head, she stared at her shoes the whole way to the storeroom to collect her handbag.

As Greg had ordered, 4 minutes later she was fidgeting with fingers in the back seat of his police car. She tried to focus on the pineapple scented air-freshener mixing with the aroma of Greg’s coffee going cold in the cup holder. But the closer they got to Molly’s street, the faster her heart attempted to leap out of her mouth. Keeping her breathing even was an effort, but an effort she had to force if she was intending to keep Jim from killing everyone she knew.

She hadn’t caught the name of the “old hospital”, but Jim would figure it out from what she had heard. Her teeth burrowed into her tongue. Sherlock had already figured that Jim hadn’t put those bodies there. If Jim was using her for information collection that meant he had no sure idea who had. It meant he was out of resources. But Jim Moriarty desperate was not any less dangerous. A spider without its web still bites.

“Oh, bugger!”

The seatbelt burned her neck as Molly lurched forward with the breaking car, jumping at Greg’s shout.

“Wha-?”

“Were they doing maintenance on your street, Molly? Looks like the road’s closed.”

Molly leaned forward, straining her neck to see between the metal gauze that separated her and the front seats where Greg was swearing. Shimmering in the headlights against the night, white barricades had been planted at the beginning of her street, guarded by chubby men chewing on a lollypop and a penis graffitid onto his helmet. Catching sight of the police car, he dashed to stuff the lollypop in his pocket and straighten his fluoro vest before striding over to their car.

Greg cracked his window down a few inches and inclined his head in the direction of the tradesmen.

“Police escort,” Greg stated. “Let us through.”

“’Fraid I can’t squeeze that, Guv,” bumbled the man. “Not unless you wants to be waist deep in water, water main burst, see.”

There was suddenly a lump in Molly’s throat. _Did Jim do this just to keep the police out?_

Residents and property weren’t damaged but I got a crew workin’ hard to patch up the leak, see?”

Molly tried to keep the squeak out of her voice, “its fine, Greg, I can walk from here. It’s only a block.”

Greg bit his lip. He wanted to get out of the car and walk her to the door, no doubt. But this was a one way road with only one other exit and there were no parking spaces.

“Sir, I’m gonna have to ask you to keep moving,” the tradesman said, stifling a yawn.

Molly’s eyes widened as he killed the engine and flashed his badge at the tradesman, “I am escorting this woman to her front door,” Greg informed the tradesman (currently occupied with digging his lollypop back out of his pocket). The tradesman shrugged at this information, “Your call, guv.”

Greg climbed out of the driver’s seat and slammed his door shut before opening Molly’s. He didn’t offer her a hand, standing still and expressionless until Molly had clambered out of the car and he locked it.

With only the street lamps and the absence of car headlights, Molly’s street became a swelling parade long shadows. _Strange, I can’t hear any roadwork._ But then, she supposed water mains were below the ground.

Keeping his distance, Greg nodded for her to follow him and Molly stumbled into step beside him. Neither of them spoke and, despite the lingering chill early April evenings left in the air, there was heat rising in Molly’s cheeks. She tried timing her footfall with the terrified thumping of her heart in her ears.

They were about 4 doors from Molly’s flat when she stopped, lifting a hand to brush Greg’s shoulder. His pace slowed to a dordle, but didn’t stop

“I can walk on my own from here,” she smiled, hoping he’d credit her uneven breaths to the cool night air. “I’m sure you need to check on Sally and Sherlock.”

Lestrade’s eyebrows stiffened into an expression Molly knew meant she was right, but he didn’t much enjoy the fact. After a moment of tight lipped thought he muttered, “Fine. But report to the scene tomorrow at 7am.”

Molly nodded, trying not to fidget, or swallow the lump in her throat as he turned back to walk the other way.

“Molly?”

She flinched a little as he turned back to face her, “Yeah?”

Suddenly, he was in front of her, so close she had to strain her neck to look up at him.

“I’m sorry. I’ve just been-”

“I know,” Molly took a step back from him. “I can only imagine how stressful this case has been for you.”

In truth, Molly didn’t want to let him off the hook so easily for not calling her back and shutting her out all day. But currently harbouring the most wanted and dangerous man on the planet in her apartment meant that whatever was between her and Greg had to wait. Or else there would be no Greg.

Greg was still rambling, “I’ll get kicked off the case if I do,” he was saying, “But I just want to know why you called Sherlock first? Are you okay?”

Blinking, Molly was slightly taken aback by that line of questioning. _Was he…jealous?_

“I’m fine, really. I was just in shock and, finding those bodies like that- it was-” she swallowed, “calling Sherlock just seemed logical at the time.” She tried to shrug, but feared the action might reveal how much she was trembling. She was suddenly thankful for the rarity of the street lamps along her curving street keeping her in shadow. “Goodnight, Inspector.”

She turned her back on him just in time for her to catch his curt nod from the corner of her eye, walked the last few meters between the street lamp and her house, and was digging around in her handbag for her keys when she heard herself gasp (before she felt) the unmistakable _snick_ of a bullet landing in her back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> oh my gosh i am so sorry this took so long I am eternally grateful for all the patience, support and general lovliness of anyone who is reading this fic - THANK YOU AHHHH!! this fic is a challenge for me i've never attempted writing with time jumps so...yeah! thank you for the patience and love and whatever feedback u can give! leave a comment if u can or hmu for any kind on tumblr @letzplaymurder or on twitter @akajustmerry i am currently in new zealand being very cold so i must go snuggle in an electric blanket now but THANK U AGAIN


	4. The Crash & The Quiet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Two dead bodies and a detective desperate to remember...
> 
> Molly Hooper has been shot and the only clue Sherlock has to go on is a slip of paper pulled from the inside of a corpse. What will Sally and Sherlock find hidden in the decaying wreck of Hellingly Hospital?

**_ 2011 _ **

_**There are certain places and times and moments when reality seems ever so slightly entirely askew.** _

Where your feet plant the middle of an empty highway, shopping complexes in the minutes before they close, swimming pools still sloshing in the middle of January… Disregarded places, waiting for their ordinariness to return.

Marlene Parring had never known her reality to be anything other than something outside the realm of ordinary. So the aforesaid sorts of moments were usually lost on her. Though she had to admit that sitting in the back of a cab between her oldest friend and Sherlock Holmes, trundling up the cobblestoned street of Edinburgh’s most exclusive and expensive suburb was a scenario she had never encisioned.

Leaning forward, Irene wrapped her knuckles on the plastic window between herself and the driver.

“Here is fine, thank you,” she called, voice sharp.

The cab lurched to their left in response as the driver pulled over, the still shirtless Sherlock Holmes squandering no time in wrenching himself free of the back of the stifled cab. Marley wondered if this was a result of Marley’s insistence on accompanying them, or the fact that his attire consisted of exactly zero shoes, no shirt and a pair of torn up bloodstained trousers, and the top temperature was predicted at 4 degrees Celsius.

Either way, he didn’t wait for the two women to pay the cabbie before strode up the driveway to their destination.

The sleek black exterior of the cab had only just curved to exit the street when Marley linked her up around Irene’s elbow as they fell into step to follow Sherlock up the driveway.

The story of Marlene Parring and Irene Adler was this:

Precisely 19 years ago, Marley’s mother had a job in government she could not, and would never, tell Marley what it entailed. On the day her mother had quit that job, she came home, informed her that her name was now Marley, packed all their belongings they could squeeze into the back of their tiny car and drove out into the night and the English countryside. Until, on a road that had had no turn offs for 3 hours and Marley’s eyes were weighed down by the drive, her mother pulled over.

Through the fog of her breath on the window, Marley watched another car pull up in front of them. A pale woman got out, kissed Marley’s mother’s cheek and shook her hand in a way that pulled at 12 year old Marley’s insides like when she watched her mum with patients.

But Marley assumed her exhaustion claimed her after that. When she next opened her eyes, it was to look at the 13 year old version of the woman who currently walked beside her.

Freckles splashed across her face, which was as fair as Marley and her mother were brown. Her jaw dropped to question her mother in the driver’s seat, but 13 year old Irene had pressed her fingers to her lips and handed Marley a note that read. _Thank you._

12 year old Marley had simply felt more comfuzzled until her mother pulled over, informed her that the girl would be living with them until she decided she didn’t want to and that her name was Irene and if anyone asked for a child like her by any other name, Marley was to say she didn’t know them.

This news wasn’t exactly as shocking as her mother uprooting both their lives for this girl and, at any rate, her mother wasn’t asking.

When they arrived in Edinburgh, it was exactly 4 months and 8 days before Irene spoke to Marley at all. She didn’t mind, she was used to her own company and preferred it most of the time.

But at 430am on the morning of her mother’s birthday, Marley was in the kitchen making her mother a surprise fruitcake for breakfast for when she returned from the nightshift and had obliterated their oven.

With the fire alarm shrieking, smoke swallowed up the kitchen as Marley desperately tried to minimise the casualties to the cake, the apartment and herself when Somewhere from behind she heard, “MOVE!”

Marley had ducked out of the way just in time for Irene to cover the yellow surfaces of their cramped kitchen counter in fire extinguisher fluid.

Once they’d both slowed their breathing down and the full extent of the havoc Marley’s intentions had caused came into focus, Irene burst out laughing. It was the first time she had smiled (and not the last time) she would because of Marley.

“How long until Linley gets home?” Irene had asked, still giggling. Her accent had been…odd back then, like she was trying hide herself in it.

Marley checked her fluoro yellow wristwatch, “About an hour.” She winced. “There’s no way I’ll buy the stuff and make her another one in time.”  

“Duh, of course you won’t,” Irene had said, rolling her captivating pale eyes. Everything about her physically was a contradiction to Marley’s own body. “That’s why we’re going to go borrow one,” Irene shrugged.

Marley raised an eyebrow, “Do you mean steal?”

“If it suits you,” Irene replied.

Marley had barely grinned at her, before she grabbed Marley’s arm and they bounded downstairs into Edinburgh’s streets.

 

Now, walking arm in arm with Irene Adler up the drive towards a rather impressive looking hybrid of a cottage and a villa, Marley still didn’t know why her mother had taken Irene in all those years ago. But Marley had learned not to question the events that brought her what she loved most in the world.

“This place is fancy,” Marley whispered, leaning her mass of coiled hair towards Irene to whisper. “If I find out you’ve been livin here in the heights this whole time I’m gonna be mental.”

Irene laughed, though it was a sound filled with more exhaustion than humour, “It’s just a place I know where the spare key is.”

“Wait, whose house is this?”

“No one’s at the moment,” Irene answered as they climbed the lacquered wooden steps into the two story monstrosity. Irene detached herself from Marley to shut the door behind them. Hugging her long coat around herself, Marley shivered.

“No one for the whole of winter, more like- They don’t have a fireplace, do they?”

Irene gave Marley’s shoulder a patronising pat, “Go for a run if you get too cold.”

Marley scowled without mustering any real poison behind it, “I hate you.”

Irene walked over into what seemed the living room, calling back over her shoulder, “no you don’t!”

Marley shook her head, though there were no witnesses to the action and looked around.

The inside of the lavish abode was dim, due to the drawn blinds policing any light going in or out. Listening to the scuffed heel of her boot on polished floorboard, Marley shuffled her feet until her shoe souls squeaked. “Varnish,” she mumbled, shoving her hands in her coat pockets and striding down the hall.

From what she could see in the absence of light, the hallway was wide and painted in a deep purple hue that disguised itself black in the dim. Marley half skipped towards the outline of a picture frame on the wall, squinted through her reflection on the glass and felt her jaw drop.

“OH MY GOD!”

“Be quiet, Marley!”

But Marley, stumbling over a paisley rug, staggered towards the direction of Irene’s ironic shout.

The sitting room lay beyond and ridiculously large archway and had an equally as unnecessarily extravagant high ceiling bedecked with gold fan that reflected the dark room beneath it dull and distorted. Irene slumped in a high back 3 seater, her bare feet resting on the carved wooden coffee table that Marley barely managed to steer clear of as she bounded forward.

“This-!”

Irene didn’t even sit up, “Please, Marley, keep your voice do-”

Marley hissed through clenched teeth, “THIS IS THE PRESIDENT’S VILLA?!”

“Is it?” yawned Irene.

“You’re performing a heist with Francios Hollande’s secret whore villa as your base?”

“It’s not like I could book a hotel, Mar,” Irene closed her eyes, waving her palm vaguely at Marley’s hysterics.

Marley scoffed, “What about prints?”

“Leave as many as you want,” Irene replied. “This is his secret villa for his 3 month mistress stints as you so aptly pointed out.”  

“Yeah, but choosing between revealing he’s the member of underground crime oligarchy vs revealing where he takes lady friends – it’s practically life or idiocy.”

“And he’s a fragilely masculine man in power, Mar,” sighed Irene, flexing her toes where her feet were crossed on the table, “He’s not going to have a choice when we’re finished.” Sitting forward, Irene cupped her hands together before bringing them up to her mouth and blowing into them. “It is cold in here,” she muttered.

“Was he one of your clients?” Marley asked, the question covered in frost.

“Grow up. We all have contacts.”

Marley bit her tongue. Looking away from Irene for a moment and crossing her arms, Marley watched the steam of her breath in the darkened room for a few seconds before she spoke again.

“Tell me your endgame and don’t say you don’t have one cos the secret presidential villa you have access to and didn’t tell me says otherwise.”

Irene smirked, “Compartmentalisation. You know better than to interrogate me, Mar.”

“Fine, just tell me you’ve trialed your plan?”

“I thought you didn’t want me to lie to you anymore?”

Marley did nothing except stare down her nose at Irene until Irene looked away on the preteens of standing up. “Its 5pm and Victor Trevor’s Shadow Congregation is in 8 hours. I need to sleep and you need to go and play your part.” Irene’s low voice gave away nothing except how true it was that she needed rest as she stood up and stretched.

Sighing, Marley walked around the coffee table and wrapped her arms around Irene Adler, slipping her arms around her waist. For a second, Irene stiffened and made Marley wonder how long it had been since she had been hugged. Resting her chin on Irene’s shoulder, she could feel the curly mass of her hair pushing back on the side of her head against Irene’s cheek as Irene’s fingers clasped slowly around Marley’s coat.

“What’s this for?” Irene whispered into Marley’s hair.

“Because,” Marley breathed, pulling back and freeing one hand from Irene’s waist to push strands of hair back from the other woman’s cheeks, “Sometimes I just need to feel you’re real and not some imaginary friend that gets me in trouble.”

Chortling, the shadow of a smile ran across Irene’s lips before she mouthed, “thank you,” kissed Marley on the cheek and showed her to the door.

A cool breeze ruffled Marley’s brows. The door shut behind her, Marley turned to face the silhouette of Edinburgh’s rooftops beyond the cobblestone drive and hoped against the electricity in the air and the tightening of her stomach she hadn’t said goodbye to Irene Adler for the last time.

 

 

 

 

 

**_ Present Day... _ **

 

**_CRASH_ **

**_QUIET_ **

**_CRASH_ **

**_quiet_ **

**_CRASH_ **

**_quiet_ **

**_Swinging hospital door after swinging hospital door – swing and shut, swing and shut, swing and shut. The gurney wheels grunting and screeching with every brief collision before it burst through into another fleetingly infinite corridor between the gurney and the E R surgery._ **

There are some moments in your life where you wish your life was a film. Not because you want to look like a film star, not because you never want to worry about the finer details in life and not really even because you wouldn’t mind being guaranteed some kind of happy ending.

No.

Sometimes you just wish your life was a film so you can get up and walk out.

But Greg Lestrade wouldn’t abandon Molly Hooper.

A plastic glove, smeared with as much blood as Lestrade’s shirt wore down his front, collided with his chest.

“Sir,” Lestrade saw the E.R nurses’ lips for the word rather than heard it. “Only surgeons and nurses beyond this point.”

His mouth on autopilot, he tried to push past him, “I’m a detective at Scotland Yard. That woman is a key witness in my case!”

More hands suddenly yanked his forearms back. In the space of a blink, Greg had attempted to launch himself passed the ER nurse who was now shouting,

“That woman is losing blood very fast and the staff cannot help her if they have to deal with you as well, sir! Please remain calm and the Doctors will notify you as soon as they have done their job!”

The hands loosened their grip. The next scene Lestrade registered was watching Molly’s blood run down the sink from under his fingernails.

The pink soap from the soap dispenser stung the insides of his palms, but he kept them under the running water until his senses realigned themselves with reality. Until Molly’s scream became the whistle of the faucet, until he could see nothing but black on the inside of eyes, until the smell of the dispenser soap drowned the smell of Molly’s blood on his shirt, until he didn’t have to remind himself to breathe.

Lestrade twisted the faucet with numb fingers. The water stopped. Ears ringing, he reached into the inside pocket of his coat, drew out his mobile and hit speed dial. It took 6 and a half rings for Sally to pick up, during which Lestrade buttoned his coat up over the blood staining his shirt as much as his twitchy fingers would allow.

“What?”

“Get here now!” Lestrade failed not to shout.

“What, but-”

“MOLLY HOOPER HAS BEEN SHOT!”

 

***

Sally hung up the call. No sooner had she done so, Sherlock’s hand fastened down on the steering wheel and the car was tugged sideways out of the line of traffic.

“What the fu-?!” Sally slammed her foot down onto breaks, an action completely driven by instinct rather than logic. The back end of the car swerved on its front until Sherlock steered it up onto the curb and the pair of them jolted forward with the leftover force.

“You can’t-?!”

But she shut up at the sight of her own Taser occupying the space in front of her nose between Sherlock’s fingers. Behind it, Sherlock’s glare was one of unconditional desperation.

“I’m driving,” Was all he said.

“How did you get my-?” She cut herself off, remembering how he’d twisted her shoulder back at the morgue. “This is unnecessary. Molly Hooper is-”

A snarl was a far too kind word for his next words, “The person responsible for those bodies is the same person who shot Molly. They want me to me to go to that hospital - I will be there. Let me drive, or I’ll remove you.”

What was more intimidating about the last part of his statement was that his voice had simmered down from a snarl into the audible equivalent of the sure edge of a blade being held to her throat.

“The Detective Inspector will look after Molly,” he said in the same calm voice that made Sally think of rattle snakes. “There is nothing we can do for her back there and you know it, Sergeant.”

People were clambering around their police car, Sally realised they all probably thought it had been an accident. She straightened her back in the seat.

“I have a badge to drive this car at speed,” she said, lowering her glare to the Taser he still pointed at her chest, which lowered as she raised her eyes back up to his gaunt face. “I’m driving.”

Sherlock’s face contorted, “I-”

“You will give me directions and I will follow them within non-life-threatening parameters. Is that clear, Mr Holmes?”

“Go,” he growled after a minute of mutinous glaring. “Take the first left onto the motorway. Sussex will still take at least an hour from here.”

Nodding, Sally flicked on the siren and waited for the crowds to scramble. Before, shooting a wary look at Sherlock, she backed onto the road and sliced through the traffic squeezing aside to let them passed. The siren screamed, dull and shrill, through the wound up windows as she drove.

“What do you think is at Hellingly Hospital?” she asked. “Not the killer, obviously.’

“Obviously,” he echoed, not removing his eyes from the windshield. “Hellingly was abandoned in early 2000, but was bought private in 2005 after a train of unsuccessful reclamation projects.”

“Think its coincidence that our paint seller, Mr Coleman’s, only recent charge was for trespassing on private property?”

From the corner of her eye, she saw the corner of his mouth quirk towards her.

“I don’t believe in coincidence, Sergeant.”

“So, whoever put the bodies in the morgue probably met with Coleman at Hellingly to get the paint?” Sally thought aloud, flicking on the windshield wipers to combat the rain.

Sherlock shook his head, “Coleman was telling the truth about the paint being destroyed.”

“You already looked at the files?”

He waved away the question, “Trust me, he was telling the truth. Take that exit.”

Sally turned off the motorway, maintaining their breakneck speed not without anxiety. Clearing her throat over the sound of the sirens, she asked, “What do you think we’ll find there?”

Sherlock stopped rubbing the tips of his fingers together and folded them into a fist. “Not what,” he said. “Who.”

 

 

 

 

 

  _ **2011...**_

 

**_Pain, Light, nothing…_ **

**_Pain. Light. Nothing_ **

**_Pain_ **

**_Light_ **

**_Nothing._ **

**_“Miss Adler?”_ **

**_Pain_ **

**_Light_ **

**_Noth-_ **

**_“Miss Adler?”_ **

**_PAIN._ **

**Flinging her body upright, Irene’s eyelids flew open. Squinting, breathing heavy with every nerve in her body protesting so adamantly at being woken so abruptly that it took her a moment to realise her hands were by her sides so the hands on her shoulders belonged to-**

“Its fine,” Sherlock said, retracting his fingers from her shoulder blades. “Everything is fine. But you need to get ready.”

As her vision focused, her eyes ran over his suited form crouching beside the sofa where she had crashed. Flicking her eyes upward, the clock on the wall behind his slicked back curls flashed 2:00am **.**

Rubbing her eyes, she nodded. Sherlock straightened up, smoothing the creases in his suit.

“You should lose the bowtie,” Irene yawned. Stretching, a blanket fell off her legs that she couldn’t recall placing there when she fell asleep. Side eyeing, Sherlock fixing his reflection the microwave in the adjacent kitchen, she bit her lip to stop it flinching upward.

“France’s leader always wears them,” Sherlock replied.

“Probably not to a meeting where no one will hesitate to strangle him with it,” Irene pointed out. Sherlock said nothing, but from the edge of her sight, Irene saw him yank the ruby red bowtie from his black collar. Snickering, Irene crossed the room and headed down the purple hall for the bathroom, passing a looming over sized mahogany dining room as she went.

 

The Villa’s shower was less of a shower and more of a man made rainforest canopy that made one curious of who would be large enough to actually require a showerhead of that size. But after a night of rubble, fire and chaos, Irene’s stiffened muscles and impossible to ignore bruises were glad of a little excess.

Like Sherlock, her attire aimed for less of party attire and more minimizing anything that could be used to kill her, consisting only of high waisted black trousers, a sleeveless white collared blouse, boots and maroon velvet blazer to hide any over confident bruising. It didn’t scream ostentatious, nor invisibility, and that was the game.

Clearing clumps of her freshly cut hair from beneath the silver guilded vanity mirror into the bin, Irene wiped the condensation from her reflection. The jawline length hair and bangs didn’t suit her well, nor did the peroxide shade of blonde, but it was better than wearing a death wish.

Reaching down into the vanity draw, Irene found a pair of rubber gloves and set to work ridding the bathroom of any evidence of her presence. Not that anyone knew that this Villa existed, but she needed peace of mind.

She was crouched on the floor triple checking for stray hairs when Sherlock entered the bathroom.

He knocked after he entered, “You’ve been in here over an hour- are you al-?”

Irene froze as he caught sight of her amongst the green tiles on the floor.

She cleared her throat and sat back on her knees. “Just making sure,” she said.

He folded his arms, “Again?”

“Those bruises on your knuckles fresh?” she muttered, rising to her feet and flushing the last of the hair down the toilet.

When she turned around, she found her hair had hypnotised Sherlock into a catatonic state. He shook his head, blinking.

“Left the roots natural, nice touch.”

“I’m meant to be an imposter, remember?” she scowled, feeling flames rising in the freckles on her cheeks as his eyes stayed with her. When her glance ran up to his hair, shefailed to stifle a snigger.

“Balding are we, Mr Homes?”

“François Hollande is,” he said, talking to the floor more than her as she giggled. “Oh, come on, it’s a cap,” he grimaced.

“No, no, you look the part. Trust me,” she chuckled.

Sherlock sighed heavily though there was no actual weight in it, “I try not to.” And he flicked off the bathroom light switch before heading back toward the living room with Irene at his heels.

Once there, eyeing Sherlock in the lamp light they’d worked out drew the least attention from the outside, Irene’s concealed forehead graze complained at the furrowing of her brow.

“What?”

“Your face,” she said, eyeing the fine scratches that splattered his cheeks. “Last I checked, France’s elected king scumbag didn’t get his face scuffed up,” she said, coolly. “You’ll draw attention to yourself before its time.”

His left eye flinched in a clear outward manifestation of his desperation to find a flaw in her logic, “Well, we have 20 minutes,” he said with a hint of a jeer. “What do you suggest?”

Irene grinned, “Aren’t you lucky that neither of us picked up a tan in Istanbul?”

 

10 minutes later Irene was sliding a clear plastic makeup pouch across the kitchen bench toward whee Sherlock leaned against it.

His eyebrows folded slightly as they ran up to the edge of the bald cap on his head. “I suppose there’s no mystery as to why you have a spare key to this place and that there’s a makeup kit that fits you perfectly.”

“There shouldn’t be,” she said, winking.

Picking up the bag he unzipped it and frowned at the contents. After a minute, he swallowed. “You know,” he half mumbled, keeping his eye contact stuck to the clear plastic zip-bag in his hands, “the problem with mirrors they’re a 2D reflective surface that doesn’t accuately-”

Irene cut across him, “You know, proving you’re a smart ass as a way of asking for help is a little redundant, Mr Holmes.”

His eyes widened in mockery, “Help? Well, if you happen to be able-”

“Sit down,” Irene rolled her eyes and slid onto the bench stool opposite him. Pressing her knees together, she placed the open make up bag on her thighs and tried to ignore the niggling thought that her and Sherlock’s knees brushed whenever she adjusted herself in the seat. This was partly due to the uncalled for stomach tightening at the unexpected intimacy of applying concealer to his cheeks, but mostly because her knees where still tender from the motorcycle accident they’d endured less than 24 hours ago.

 _That’s your most pathetic excuse yet,_ she thought to herself. Irene found the pore filling ointment.

Hands still gloved from dealing with the bathroom, the pore filler tube felt soft in her plastic covered fingertips. Uncorking the lid and putting it beside the pair of them on the bench, she lifted her head to look at him.

“Don’t flinch,” she said, chewing her tongue as she leaned forward and dabbed small dollops of the pore cream over the thin lacerations on his cheeks, nose and forehead and smoothing over them with the tips of her fingers.

Mr Holmes kept his eyes closed and frame statuesque all the while.

Once, she had blended the pore cream with a (very frayed) brush, she dug around for the compact eye shadow at the bottom of the bag. Upon retrieving it, the contents revealed a powdered pastel pallet of golds, blues and greens.

“Green is best for scratches and bruising, it’s the colour base for most concealers,” Sherlock stated without opening his eyes. Tilting her head, the brush scuttled over the green shade before Irene raised it to his face.

She leaned toward him, “I must admit, I’m impressed, Mr Holmes.” Her breath disturbed the thin hairs of his wig as she spoke.

“You don’t think you’re the only person who had to learn how to hide bruises, do you?”

“I suppose not,” she said, shuffling forward in her seat a little to run the brush lightly over the memory of the bruising left by the tinted poor cream. Armed with the palette in one hand, she used the other to reload the bush as she set about greenifying Sherlock’s cuts and bruises.

Minutes passed this way, with her tongue between her teeth, the faint smell of the powder tickling her nose and Sherlock’s impressive stillness.

“You can breathe, you know,” she said, wanting fill the silence to keep her pulse quiet more than anything else.

“I’ll keep that in mind,” he muttered as Irene brushed over the space between his brows.

A laugh stumbled out of the back of her throat.

“If you turn me into a clown, Miss Adler, I swear-”

She cut him off with a chuckle, “As tempting as that would be, that’s not what I was laughing at.”

“Do tell,” he said, sarcasm carving the two words into the space between them.

“For someone trying not to trust me, you’re failing rather miserably.”

“Yes, well, I don’t have much choice when you’re dragging my unconscious form the flaming motorcycle you crashed.”

Irene exhaled, blowing her new blonde bangs out of her eyes as she leaned back and swapped the eyeshadow for foundation. She squeezed the last of the contents of the nearly empty tube onto her cupped fingers and was painting it carefully over his face with the brush when she spoke. “You trusted me enough to save your life in Paris, to use my resources and to come here,” she reminded him.

“Desperate times call for desperate measures, Miss- ouch!”

Irene smirked even though his eyes were squeezed shut too tight to see, “Sorry, was that your eye?”

Sherlock crossed his arms, “Yes.”

Irene scoffed. “So, you can admit that, but not that you’d be dog meat if it weren’t for me?”

“You poking me in the eye is a fact, the other is a perception.”

“Facts are perceptions yet to be proven false. The brush went into your eye while it was shut. You can’t know it as fact that I poked you, only that it hurt you.”

“Yes. But you were the controlling force, nothing else.”

“You can’t prove my motivations,” Irene shot back. It was only on seeing the atrocious blonde of her hair reflected in his pale eyes that he realised he had opened them.

And that he had done so because she had, lowered her brush and stopped blending the concealer over his cheeks. However, Irene had not leaned backward.

Instead, the mint on his breath, the sound of her own and the way her pulse was currently scurrying through each limb towards the space between their inclined bodies indicated the distance between their heads, just like their knees, was one poor decision away from being disastrous.

“No,” he breathed, “and that has always been the problem.”

The way Sherlock’s eyes darted to her lips was a cue to return to his makeover session, though her body was doing it’s very best to convince her otherwise.

With an effort greater than she would have liked, Irene heard the noise of her throat clearing rather than felt it and ensured she had resumed the blending of the concealer on the bruises beneath his eyes before she muttered, “Well then, it’s helpful to know that at least we have one mutual feeling.”

Sherlock didn’t move, but his entire manner seemed to wince. Irene said nothing, simply savoured the affect she’d rendered on him as she finished the last of his makeup.

“Done,” she said, packing the cosmetics back into the bag and shoving it haplessly into a drawer behind her while Sherlock checked his reflection in the microwave. After a brief inspection, he reached into the pocket of his jet-black suit, drew out a pair of frameless glasses and placed them carefully on the ridge of his nose.

“Are you sure you are able to impersonate him?” Irene asked, keeping apprehension out of her voice by some miracle. Sherlock’s back stiffened at the question. When he spoke, his words resembled bricks he was attempting to hide behind his teeth,

“He tortured me for 4 months. I think I’ll manage. The car will be here in a minute. We should wait outside.”

 

 

Outside, Edinburgh’s 4am air was cold and restless. Menacing purple clouds threatened the city’s skyline below them, permeating the air with fragrance of the absent rain. The sun was a long way off rising. The only light was provided by the low moon and the ever present glow of the sleeping city.

Standing at the top of the villa’s cobblestone driveway, Irene pushed her prescription-less red glasses up where they had slid down her nose and kept her hands warm in the velvety depths of her jacket pockets. _Don’t lick your lipstick off,_ she chanted in her head.

“It’s not that I don’t trust you,” he muttered beside her.

Irene echoed his sarcastic tone from earlier, “Do tell.”

“Motivations have always been easy for me to see. For most people, its sex or money, revenge, or all three.”

“Sounds like fun,” Irene said, rocking on the backs of her boot heels.

“I can’t quite…see yours,” he frowned, the words sounding like he only meant to say them in his head, but she didn’t stop him speaking. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, necessarily. It’s that I can’t trust myself. I can’t trust what I can usually…do with everyone…around you.” He trailed off.

From the top of the drive, Irene caught sight of a lone pair of headlights turning into the street.

Straightening up, Irene rolled her eyes and whispered, “Could we maybe have had this conversation at a time when we we’re not posing as Victor Trevor’s right hand man in order to steel the Syndicate’s encrypted communication code? An activity that depends upon executing our agreed plan, or will otherwise prove fatal?”

Smirking, Sherlock offered her his arm.

“Shall we?” he asked in a flawless French accent. The car pulled up into the drive and, in the blinding light of the encroaching headlights, she took his arm.

 

 

 

 

 

 

**_Present Day..._ **

**_“This is it.”_ **

**_Sally silenced the siren, the wheels crunching beneath the car as she turned it up the drive of Hellingly Hospital. Slowing the car to a crawl, Sally kept the lights on as she killed the engine. The headlights illuminated a rusted construction fence through glowing pellets of rain._ **

“Maybe we should-”

But her suggestion was interrupted by Sherlock vacating the car and ignoring her. Shoving her seatbelt aside, Sally threw open the door to follow him. She blinked rain from her eyes as she slammed the door shut and hoisted her belt. Spotting Sherlock inspecting the fence to the left of the headlight beam, Sally strode over to join him.

“How cliché,” Sally mumbled over the buzz of the rain, looking at the shimmering Keep Out sign. “Didn’t realize we’d waltzed into a horror film. Just missing the lightning.” She unhooked the torch from her belt, holding it above her shoulder through the fence. The light fell short of the building by miles, though Sally could see the outline of the dark turreted building lit by the night. “Looks like no one’s home,” she muttered.

_CLANG_

Sally git her teeth over the sound of tearing metal and whirled around. Sherlock was ripping the keep out sign off the fence.

“What are you-?! Hang on, that’s new.”

Sherlock grimaced over his next words, “Nothing here has been maintained- Fence rusted – so why, would there- be- a- new-” With one final yank, Sherlock lifted the sign free of the fence and flipped it over. Sally moved to look over his shoulder, holding the torchlight over the sign.

Dripping in the rain, shimmering dull against the gleaming white of the sign’s back was a plastic pouch taped via masking tape to the centre. Sally and Sherlock glanced sideways at each other before Sherlock dug his nail beneath the tape and, with scrape of tape on metal, loosened the pouch.

Emptying the contents into his palm, Sherlock and Sally both frowned at the contents of Sherlock’s hand.

It was a key and a note.

The key looked rusted and 40 years too late for the time period it belonged to. Sherlock handed the key to Sally. Bringing it up to the torchlight only confirmed Sally’s observation.

“Light,” barked Sherlock as he shook rain from the folded paper. Sally aimed the torch beam at the note.

Translucent and soaked in the light deluge, night black ink trails ran from 3 words under the torchlight.

STORAGE ROOM 7

Sally wiped the rain from her eyes and cocked her head to the side.

“Sergeant?”

“What?”

“Remind me, is it breaking and entering with police officer shadowing you?”

“You’re a POI,” she said, shrugging. Sherlock froze. “If you were to trespass on Private Property, I’d have reasonable cause to search the premises.”

To her bemusement, Sherlock looked pleasantly shocked at this response, pausing in the act of mounting the fence to wink at her. Sally nodded toward the hospital beyond him, making no attempt to keep the smugness from her voice, “Get on with it, then.”

Her pocket vibrated. Swiping rain off the screen, Sally drew out her phone. Inspector Lestrade’s number flashed along with a top bar brimming with missed texts and calls. Biting her lip, she frowned down at the phone. _I could lose my job_.

A scraping clinking noise followed immediately by a far more profane version of, “OW!” tore her eyes up from the screen. Through the white flecks of the slowly quickening rain in the narrow beam of her torchlight Sherlock was dusting mud from his shoulder. Once staggered back on his feet, he beckoned for Sally to follow.

And against the crawling in the pit of her stomach, against the majority of police policy and against all her previous experience of being on cases with Sherlock Holmes, Sally placed her torch between her teeth, hooked her phone into her belt, pulled her curls into a knot top of her head and climbed the rusted fence in pursuit of her Person Of Interest.

***

The overgrown grass stretching between Hellingly hospital’s rusted perimeter fence was still plastered over Sherlock’s Brogues as they kicked at a splintered board baring the window. A few seconds and it hurtled to the floor of the interior. Behind him, Sally’s torch illuminated a two foot drop into the inside through the long shattered high window. Sally pushed the shards clear of their entrance with the side of her torch. Squinting in the rain, she nodded at the shadow ridden interior of the hospital.

“After you,” she said.

But Sherlock didn’t wait for an invitation. Gripping the frame of the windowsill with one hand, Sherlock vaulted himself into the dark. Grains of glass whistling to the floor accompanying the thud of his feet as he landed, toppling, but regained his balance.

While his eyes adjusted to the blackness, Sally’s boots hit the floor behind him and her torch illuminated a slither of the room.

Air and dust were a hybrid entity here. Trying to to ignore his damp socks inside his shoes, Sherlock had to squint to follow the torch ray. Sally had settled it on a half-eaten laminate sign.

“Floor 1,” Sherlock read aloud.

“Storage room 4 will probably be upstairs,” Sally whispered. When Sherlock was a kid he had always wondered why dark places made people want to whisper. Grown up Sherlock had a long standing theory that people who whispered unnecessarily in dark rooms were afraid of disturbing what they imagined the darkness hid.  So far, the theory had not been proven wrong.

Sally’s torchlight wandered around the room, causing shadows cast by the little that remained of the peeled wall paper to reach out over the forgotten rubble crunching under their feet.

There was no way to tell the size of the room from the torchlight and no electricity had found Hellingly in at least 5 years. But the short commute between Sally’s torch beam and where it landed indicated it was narrower than how it had looked from the outside.

“Oh my god,” Sally whispered.

“What?”

When Sally didn’t answer, Sherlock kicked up the debris at his feet on his way to face her. Sally’s eyes were fixed on the ceiling with her jaw halfway to her collar bone. Frowning, Sherlock followed the trajectory of her torchlight to the high ceilinged roof and had to swallow back his shout.

Hanging from the ceiling between the shadows scattering around Sally’s torchlight were strung up bones, dangling between the holes and mould in the roof. Somewhere in the back of his mind, Sherlock began labelling them.

“Bloody kids,” Sally muttered.

“Come on,” Sherlock whispered.

Through a hole in the wall, the hallway didn’t exactly yield anything more comfortable than the room in which they had entered, bar the fact it was drier and the debris was thinner underfoot here. At the edge of Sally’s flinching torchlight, Sherlock counted 7 dilapidated gurneys, 3 tipped over wheelchairs and at least 4 cracked baby cribs. Each looking miserable and out of date for the year they now rotted in. Sherlock sneezed the dust from his nostrils.

“Bless you,” said Sally.

“Someone’s been here recently,” he sniffled. “This dust has been cleared aside.”

“No footprints though,” said Sally, running her torch beam along the floor.

“They’re too smart for that,” Sherlock replied. The rain whistled against the building around them as they walked.

“Oh, hello,” Sally mused.

The cracked and faded edge corner of a map spread out from Sally’s torchlight on the wall a few feet ahead. Disturbing the debris in his stride, Sherlock bounded forward, whipping out his pocket magnifier as went. A “welcome” missing all its vowels headlining the map.

“Give me the light,” he said, holding out his hand behind him. The cool cylindrical surface pressed in his palm almost instantly and be brought it up to light the space between his face and the map’s surface.

It was made of polished wood and was once painted red though years of abandonment had aged it pink. Moving along the far wall, Sherlock squinted at the fractured names and labels. Eyes darting over the illustrated imitation of the hospital, it was a few minutes before Sherlock located Storage Room 7 via process of elimination.

“It’s on this floor…that way.” Sherlock pointed down the hall to his right, “It should be the 3rd door on the left.”

Handing the torch back to Sally, they trudged carefully through the dust toward the storage room.

The translucent shadows of the falling rain on the walls found their way over the top of the bordered up windows. From the corner of Sherlock’s eye, it almost seemed like the wall was breathing. Sherlock kept his eyes straight as they kept walking.

Sally stopped, turning right, “I think this is it.”

It wasn’t on the left as the map had indicated. But the “STORAGE ROOM 7” letters plaqued haphazardly to the door were hard to argue with. Sally jiggled the handle, “It’s locked.”

Sherlock brushed her aside, retrieving the rusted key from the back of the keep out sign from his inside pocket and twisted it around his fingers. Sally’s brown hand seized his wrist, “This could be a trap,” she hissed.

“With this many clues and those two dead bodies?” he hissed back. “Seems a lot of effort just to snuff us out here where no one can find us.”

He wrenched his arm free of her grip.

“Wait!”

Groaning, Sherlock fixed Sally with an exasperated look. “I’m armed and qualified, you’re not. Give it to me.”

“No,” Sherlock retorted.

“Well, good luck without a light, then,” she started walking away, the light of the torch receding with her. Sherlock resisted the urge to punch the door down.

“Fine!” he whispered.

Moments later Sally was shaking the rusted key inside the lock. The door clicked almost at once. Her clenched wrist around the key, Sally glanced up at Sherlock before unholstering her Taser from her belt. Sherlock gripped the torch just behind her. She inhaled and kicked the door open.

Scrambling to reach her Taser, Sally’s heart leaped as Sherlock flooded the room with the torch’s light.

The storage room was barely bigger than a toilet cubicle, but towers of paint cans in various stages of decay shone dully between the floor and the ceiling. But the label was clear enough on most of them.

“Candy apple,” read Sally, stepping aside to let Sherlock share the compressed space. His head almost hit the lightbulb hung from the ceiling as he raised his head to look at the stack. “I thought you said Coleman was definitely telling the truth that it’d all been recalled.”

“He was. At least now we know why the place was abandoned overnight.”

“Right so, the hospital used the toxic paint, but didn’t want anyone to know so they just hid it and shut up shop? What does any of this have to do with those two bodies in the morgue? Or the dismembered rat?” Sally asked.

“The paint was probably why the hospitals fatality rates were-”

“Were what?” prodded Sally, but Sherlock didn’t answer. “Mr Holmes?”

Sally turned to look at him, but his features were as petrified as the wood bordering the windows outside. Hues of green and pale rose their way up in his cheeks and he seemed to have stopped breathing.

Sally took a small step toward him, “Sherlock?” But he didn’t move. Not an inch of him. Sally turned to face the tower of cans, searching for the torchlight’s beam. She found it, pointing at the 2nd row from the floor.

Nestled between the cans to make it look as if it was growing through the gaps was a single red rose. Bewildered, Sally looked between Sherlock’s stunned gauntness and the rose. When he didn’t move, she crouched down to retrieve it.

“Don’t!”

Sally’s arm froze mid-reach. _Was his voice…shaking?_

“Please, let me,” he said, swallowing.

Sally nodded, “Okay.” Getting to her feet, Sally shuffled back to give him space as he passed the torch with an unsteady hand and kneeled down to remove the rose from the cans.

Wrapped around the stem was a slip of paper, but that wasn’t what mesmerised Sally. It was the way Sherlock Holmes was holding this rose, as if it was fragile, as if it was so fragile he almost couldn’t stand to hold it. As if the flower resting limply on his fingers was a long lost friend he had never expected to find, rather than a half dead flower in an abandoned hospital.

“What does the note say?”

Sherlock flinched upright at the question like she’d interrupted a private conversation between him and his memory. But he wasted no time in unfurling it beside her.

Sally had barely glimpsed the writing, before Sherlock stowed the rose in his coat and shoved Sally aside.

Clenching her fist she followed him out into the corridor, “Oi, what-?”

He rounded on her, “Did you bring those files from Coleman?”

Sally scrunched up her nose at the edge in his tone. “Maybe,” she answered. “Why?”

Sherlock groaned, “Did you, or didn’t you?”

“Why?” Sally repeated. “Even if I did. Why would I let my POI see them?”

Sherlock closed the ground between them to growl down into her face, though Sally didn’t move. “Because I know where the man who shot Molly Hooper is, but I need those files to be sure.”

“Tell me his name,” Sally demanded as Sherlock flung himself back the way they had come.

“Victor Trevor! Hurry up!”

***

Another reason Sebastian Moran liked the secret tunnels of subterranean London was that it didn’t reek of people. Beneath the bustling streets, the air was untouched by body odour and overpriced perfume and morning breath and poorly hidden hangovers. Subterranean London smelled of smoke and metal and coal and something metallic that belonged to another time, but had stuck around out of spite. So when Sebastian’s breath, stirred cigarette smoke into the shadow infested tunnel, it felt…special.

“Want one?” he asked, pulling the cigarette butt away from his lips.

“No,” Irene Adler replied, distracted, pacing in front of him. “I have to- Oh, for goodness sake, put that out before you blow us up,” she snapped.

Without so much as a shrug, Moran extinguished the cigarette on the surface of his right forearm. Irene Adler didn’t notice and he didn’t mind.

He took a breath that tasted of his own singed flesh. “Jim’s bolted,” he said. “Still in London though.”

“You used the gun I told you to use?” Irene confirmed for probably the 10,000th time. Sebastian nodded.

“Had a shit range,” he shoved his hands in his pockets and tried not to sound as bored as he felt. “But it’s done. Hid it where you told me to.”

Irene let out a sigh, leaned against the curved tunnel wall beside him and folded her arms. The torchlight just above her forehead shivered. Flicking it, she muttered, “Should get back before this fails.”

“Don’t sweat,” Sebastian waited a minute for the two words to cease bounding around the walls. “I don’t get lost down here.”

Her torch light jumped with the raise of her brows, “Don’t suppose you’d want to share how?”

Sebastian detached himself from the tunnel wall, digging around his pockets for his lighter. Plucking a spare cigarette from behind his left ear, he pulled it free from a few strands of his greasy locks before popping it between his lips and lighting it. He took a lengthy swig before answering his employer.

“You ain’t the first crazy bastard to use these tunnels, Adler,” the words pushed smoke from his lips where it hung in the air between them.

“Perhaps not,” she mused, straightening up and holding out an expectant hand. Sebastian placed the cigarette between her fingers before she raised them to take a drag. “But I will be the last,” and she doused the cigarette with the sole of her shoe.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, my loves!!  
> Apologies for the massive gap and thank you for being so patient and supportive!! Now that I'm settled back into uni and new meds, chapters will be closer together, I promise!  
> Hope you all enjoyed!!! Hmu on twitter/tumblr/Youtube @akajustmerry or leave a comment maybe??  
> lots of love,  
> Merry xo


	5. Beneath The Dark Above

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sally Donovan & Sherlock Holmes find themselves treading the secret tunnels of subterranean London, following the menacing clues left in the two nameless corpses at St. Bart's. But what awaits them beneath London's is an answer far more complicated than either of them prepared for,

_**2011** _

Edinburgh’s 2am air is gunpowder: one eager matchstick from hell. The kind of teeming stillness that breaths down your spine to keep you awake. Not that you’re asleep. It is the kind of night that comes with a warning. One simple warning. The breeze from beyond the cliffs whispers between the cracks in the cobblestones, skirting around the gargoyles hidden by the shadows, leaving the frost on the gravestones and your hands in your pockets. Edinburgh at night, whispering the warning it knows you will not heed:

_One wrong step, and you’re dead._

Of course, this could all just be inside Irene Adler’s head but, even if it wasn’t real…it wasn’t wrong.

Swallowing back the dryness in her throat, Irene tapped the tips of her fingers on the tops of her knees, waiting for Sherlock to walk around the back of the sleek black hire car. _This was it._ She inhaled through her nose, the air trembling slightly as she exhaled and resisted flinching as Sherlock opened the car door beside her. Swinging her legs out, her boots sloshed on the damp cobblestones as she stepped out into the evening. Sherlock reached around her, closed the car door and offered her his arm.

Arm in arm, they passed their grey reflections in dormant shop windows. The peroxide shade of blond in Irene’s hair punctuating her reflections reminded Irene she wasn’t a ghost. She snatched an upward glance at Sherlock.

Beneath the perscriptionless lenses, his eyes were fixed firmly ahead. He seemed still, but the convenient thing about a bald cap, she supposed, is that it captures sweat. Something that would arouse suspicion in Edinburgh’s winter ridden air.

The blackened sky above their heads slowly dissolved to purple. The buildings staring down at them as they turned up the corner, curled torwards them in the dawn like claws and Irene was suddenly hyperaware of how menacing Edinburgh’s old turrets and twisted skyline looked before the sun found them.

She shook herself, breathing in the smoky air.

“This way,” muttered Sherlock, steering the pair of them down a nearly invisible side street infected with shadows. Before walking down the stone steps, Irene caught another glimpse of the city’s lower skyline through the gap between the buildings, expanding, uneven and asleep. Drawing her eyes downward, she followed Sherlock down the stairs.

On a concrete landing, Sherlock stopped and wrapped his knuckles on a dead-bolted door. A few clicks and rattles later, a green eyeball examined them from the gap between the door and its frame. With no delay, Sherlock muttered the password in French. The green eye narrowed as it settled on Irene.

Rushing to wrap her tongue around her dusty French, Irene echoed Sherlock’s password. The beat between the end of the phrase and when the green eye vanished trapped her breath in her lungs. But, her anxiety decreased when the rusted door opened wide enough for the pair of them to slip through.

On the other side, Irene blinked her eyes, adjusting to the dim light. They were standing in a narrow corridor lit by flickering fluorescents that seemed out of place in the cramped paisley carpeted hall. The green eyeball, she now saw, belonged to a strapping ginger haired man that Irene might have thought was a statue if he didn’t point them down the corridor.

Without reacting, or thanking the man, Irene allowed Sherlock to lead the pair of them down the corridor, trying not to think about the bareness of the wooden walls, or the smell of bleach seeping up into her nostrils.

Irene unclasped their arms as they reached a narrow winding set of stairs at the end of the corridor, Sherlock holding his arm out to ensure he descended first before they continued in silence. She gulped. Her ears were ringing with the sprinting of her pulse and it was starting to become a conscious effort not to grit her teeth. Time was adrenaline in her veins, leaping forward without her really registering.

_But I can’t change it now._

They had reached the bottom of the stairs. The only thing to greet them was an old style lift, the kind that seems to rattle even without occupants. Sherlock stepped forward and slid the grated door to one side. With a clang, he held it against the frame as Irene stepped in. The inside of the lift was cramped enough that there was nowhere Sherlock didn’t have to duck his head. Slightly hunched over, he locked them in the lift and Irene pulled the leaver to their left.

“We’re being bottled,” she mumbled, staring at the brick crawling past them as the lift trundled its way downward.

“One way in. One way out,” Sherlock muttered back.

Irene lowered her voice until she was barely breathing the words, “Sher-”

“You’re all I have,” his mumble cut across her. Her stomach plummeted faster than the rattling lift. “I’m in deep cover. I can’t contact my brother and we are about to go and into a room full people who will kill me on sight if they realise who I am.” Sherlock hisses were barely audible as he spoke, “You and this plan are the only things standing between me and that and I need you to understand that.”

“I do,” Irene breathed.

“Good,” he said.

They both winced as their shoulders collided. The lift had lurched to a stop, but Sherlock wasted no time in throwing the door aside and exiting the suddenly all too tiny elevator. Beyond the door, he waited for Irene to join him. Irene squared her shoulders, stepped out and took his arm. As if it were clockwork, the lift snapped up and rose back the way they came.

Before Irene and Sherlock stood yet another door, though this one was clearly unguarded. Its metal frame groaned as Irene pushed it open and they stepped through.

Indiscernible heads jerked towards them in the dim light provided only by a single florescent at the far edge of the room. In the dark, there was no way to tell how big the room was.

Silenced pushed in all around them, the darkness slithering with the silhouettes of Victor Trevor’s faceless puppets. Gripping her arm tight as he went, Sherlock made his way towards the table Irene could just see in the middle of the room. Irene’s ears hummed in a quit so overly potent, it tasted like a trap.

She wanted to find Marley. Irene knew she was already here. As Admiral and overseer of the Pit, she was technically the one who called this shadowy congregation-

Something small was pressed into her palm.

Unable to make it out in the darkness, Irene twirled it along the tips of her fingers. It was thin, cylindrical – _an earpiece…_ She clipped it around her ear. Suddenly she could hear the murmurs of all the others occupying the room, almost silent snatches of languages spoken too fast to translate. Sherlock’s arm was still around her own when the ear piece crackled.

“Good evening.”

Sherlock went stiff beside her. Everyone responded in their relative dialects. Irene strained her ears for a Scottish –

“Evenin’, sir.”

It took every iota of will power Irene’s mind possessed to not react to the sound of Marley’s voice. With an effort, she mumbled a greeting response in French to Trevor. From what Marley had told Irene, these meetings were conducted entirely in darkness. Because the greatest crime syndicate the world never knew only thrived because no one in the network knew quite who was in it. Only people like Trevor and Moriarty knew exactly who everybody was. That was the operation’s greatest strength.

But tonight, in this room, it would be its greatest weakness and Victor Trevor’s final regret. Because with Moriarty gone, there was now only one person left to break.

His slimy cocktail of an accent slunk up through her earpiece. “As some of you may be aware,” Trevor said, “the Pit was compromised not 23 hours past. It’s Admiral was taken hostage and imitated by a couple of imposters.”

There was a small tempest of fervent anxiety in response to his drawl. Trevor continued, “The imposters were confronted by myself before they lay waste to my establishment. There is a possibility that the rats in question have a connection to Sherlock Holmes.”

Marley’s voice crackled in after Trevor’s, “We have strong reason to suspect these imposters were also responsible for the dismantlement of Paris.”

“Which is why,” purred Trevor, “if Paris’ Shadow is present, I must speak with you and the Admiral immediately. As for the rest of you, owing to the infection spreading through my network, I have opened an undetectable sub-wave network for emergency communications. You will find the instructions to access this network on the mini usb in your ear-pieces. Bare in mind each of you has a separate log in that translates directly to me. If there is an imposter, I will know. Now, you will all receive instructions as to precisely when you are to vacate this premises. Could Paris’ Shadow, please stay where you are.”

Irene’s earpiece clicked. Around her the air shuffled, but she kept her feet planted where they were. Unlinking their arms, Sherlock’s fingers brushed hers, but Irene didn’t have time to waste wondering if it was deliberate. _This was it._

Her earpiece had been disabled, but the smell of mint and cigars told her that Trevor was a little more than a breath from where she stood.

“Bonsior, Monsieur Hollande.”

Irene’s breath caught in her throat. Trevor was directly in front of her.

Using Sherlock’s perfectly imitated “Bonsior” as cover, Irene tiptoed backward into the dark until two hands found her wrists from behind.

Even in the black of the room’s edge, Irene knew it was Marley. Her long slender fingers unfurled from Irene’s wrists and Irene felt her move to stand beside her.

The benefit of maintaining silence meant there was no room to question what they were about to do.

With her body pulsing, every hair on her body on end and guilt crawling over her skin, Irene and Marley launched themselves at the two men.

In the dark, the fight was quick. A jumbled procession of grunts and cracks and muffled screams. For Irene and Marley it was practically rehearsed. A dance with the Devil and the one they had doomed.

“IRENE-?”

Twisting his wrist, Irene hooked her angle around his shin and landed with her knee against his collarbone.

“WHAT ARE YOU-?”

Irene thrust her palm upward and his body went limp beneath her.

“Bron, turn on the lights, will ya?” Marley shouted as Irene got to her feet. The rest of the lights shivered to life row by row above them. It took a moment for Irene’s eyes to focus on Trevor. When her eyes did, she saw Marley had him on his knees, blood trickling from his hairline while his shoulder dangled, luckless and twisted, from its socket.

He spat blood at her feet, “Irene Adler.”

“Finally, we meet face to face, Mr Trevor,” her voice shook, skipping along the adrenaline in her veins. “I must say, I’m a fan of your work.”

“Shoulda known, you’d be fucking the French Minister- AGH-” Marley twisted his dislocated shoulder. “What?” he panted. “Death not profitable enough for you?”

“On the contrary, I’m collecting my long standing investment.”

“Yeah, well whatever Jim Moriarty offered you, that offer expired after you threw your lot in with Sherlock Holmes.”

Irene chuckled, “Gosh, why do men think all women care about is money? You really think I want a bribe, Trevor?”

His throat twitched.

“Bron!” Marley shouted. The strapping green eyed door guard walked through what Irene guessed was the door in which they had entered. Marley nodded toward Sherlock’s sprawled unconscious form. “Take him to my mum,” she ordered. “She knows what to do.”

Bron flung Sherlock up over his shoulder and carried him from the room. Irene felt nausea in every bone in her body.

But it was done.

 “Here’s what’s going to happen in the next 24 hours,” Marley tugged at Trevor’s arm, ignoring his yelps of pain as she spoke, “You are going to name me emergency head of the entire syndicate, you are going to give me complete control over every operation and person under your supervision and command-”

“Or what, bitch?” Trevor spat. “OUC-FU-!”

“That wasn’t a choice, _”_ Marley retorted.

“And finally, you will inform Russia and the Serbians that Sherlock Holmes was responsible for the Pit, Paris and the death of Frances’ minister, and you have unrefusable intel that he is headed their way next,” Irene finished.

Trevor hurled a rasping cackle up at her, “You think you’ve won this, haven’t you?”

“No, Mr Trevor. But I am certain that you have lost.”

** Present Day… **

 

“So, you don’t remember anything after your contact betrayed you?” Sally confirmed.

“I woke up in a hotel with two Bulgarian henchmen, telling me my… my _ally_ had been killed and Trevor had fled to Serbia.”

“But…you don’t remember anything before that?”

“Not well enough to be useful,” Sherlock punched the dashboard of the car, savouring the way the pain made him angry at something other than his mudded memory for a moment.

“Okay, so why would Trevor come back? To kill you?”

“Something uncreative like that, yes.”

“But what does anything of what you just told me have to do with the paint, or the rose?”

Sally jerked the car as Sherlock shoved the list of names in her face.

“Hellingly hospital was not the only place in London abandoned over night because of a bad paint job. Several people on this list were business owners.”

Sally wacked the list from her line of sight, “So, what? There’ll be 100s of names there.”

“But only one-” he paused, before showing her the note they’d retrieved from the hospital, his fingers very particularly placed over half of it. “Only one Aberline Smith!”

The slanted scrawl on the note echoed his triumphant announcement. Scrambling to shove it back in his pocket, Sherlock continued, “Aberline Smith was a big scale interior designer. In the 50s he did a lot of work on the London Underground and the old post office and, according to Coleman’s records, Candy Apple was one of his go to shades.”

Tongue jammed between her teeth, Sally sifted through her Urban History knowledge as she drove the car down the freeway back toward the inner city. Admittedly, her knowledge was limited to what she’d investigated in a shelved Sebastian Moran case back in 2008. But, she had spent a good few days combing subterranean London with her SWAT team and if her memory served her right…

“The old telephone exchange under Chancery Lane!” Sally slapped her fist on the steering wheel, “God, I’m an idiot- Half the walls down there are that shade of red!”

Sherlock sat back in his seat, Coleman’s files spilling off his lap onto the car’s floor without his attention, “And it completely vanished off all maps in the late 1950s…”

“Exactly when all that paint was re-called,” Sally finished, punctuating her words with the flick of the siren switch above her head. Rain whipped against the windows as she pressed her foot down on the accelerator. Glancing at the dash, she was surprised to see it was only 2am. Time flies in the company of lunatics, she supposed.

 

 

 

The rose in his inside pocket was a knife between his ribs as Sherlock Holmes’ and Sally Donovan made a B-line for the red turreted entrance of Chancery Lane Tube station.

2 am gave London’s empty streets a heartbeat. But the quiet pulsed in Sherlock’s ears like a threat. His shoes pounded on the pavement as he tore past the empty shops until he reached the bordered up face of the old exchange building. The black boards blocking the windows and doors would’ve made the building invisible against the night…if it wasn’t for the splattering of bright red paint.

“IT’S HERE,” Sherlock shouted, staggering back to examine the best point of entry. Sally skidded to a panting halt beside him.

“I know how to-” she started, swallowing back her gasps. “I know how to get in. There’s a fire escape door- Over here-”

Sherlock followed Sally to the edge of the building. Squinting up against the night, Sherlock spotted the fire access door wedged in between the forgotten building and its neighbour.

“Can you boost me?”

Sally nodded, lacing her fingers together and crouching. Sherlock, much lighter than she had expected, wasted no time in hoisting himself up over the hoarding and vanished for a moment.

***

In the narrow space between the boards and the building’s long forgotten face, Sherlock found the fire door. The bones in his shoulder stung mutinously as he rammed it against the door.

Within minutes, he and Sally were making their way down a narrow set of steel stairs. Twisting down and down, the heels of Sherlock’s brogues clanged on the grate.

“Wait,” Stopping, he rummaged around in his jacket pocket, procuring the spare flashlight Sally had given him to avoid any repeats of Hellingly. “Come on.”

As they continued descending, Sherlock counted the meters in his head, 10, 20, 30, 40…The air was starting to taste untouchable and industrial. The sweat on Sherlock’s palms cooled as he slipped his leather gloves into his coat as the early morning trains rattled somewhere far above their heads.

At 80 metres, the stairs flattened out. Standing on her tiptoes, Sally’s curls brushed Sherlock’s cheek as she strained her neck over his shoulder on the narrow landing. A hole in the floor between Sherlock’s feet pushed warm air upward onto their faces. From what Sally could see, through the hole was a dark steel ladder.

“Are you sure this is where Trevor wants you to go?”

“Once you eliminate the impossible-”

“Yeah, yeah,” tutted Sally. “Get a move on.”

Sherlock ducked down into the hole. Sally waited 5 seconds, counting Sherlock’s fading footfalls as he made his way down, before lowering herself carefully onto the ladder.

Wedging the heel of her boot on the rung, Sally gripped the bars in front of her head and headed downward in Sherlock’s wake.

With air seeping from subterranean London around her, sweat trickled down Sally’s spine. The metal cage encasing the ladder prevented her from looking over her shoulder for Sherlock, but his occasional grunt was sufficient to assure Sally of his proximity.

 30 meters of alternating ladder later, Sally’s palms were slick and stinging and she hoped Sherlock hadn’t seen her lose her footing a few steps back. Licking the sweat from her top lip, she was about to shout to him when-

“You’ve got 15 more!”

“Got it,” she replied. Within a minute her, boots found solid ground and she leaned her head around under the metal safety caging.

A spectacularly neglected tunnel illuminated by tired industrial lights stretched out before them. Like many a bad horror film Sally had wasted Friday nights watching, they had a choice of 3 tunnels.

“They all link back to the same one,” Sally said, her voice bouncing keenly off the grey circular walls.

“Fastest?” Sherlock asked.

“Middle,” answered Sally and the pair of them pushed on. The middle tunnel was as illuminated as the one they had entered. Sally stowed away her flashlight, wondering who changed the bulbs, or whether they just never needed to be. Either way, there was something unsettling about the buzz of electricity in the walls. As if Subterranean London was a sleeping nightmare beneath its city counterpart and walking inside it might wake it up.

Sally shook herself mentally. _God, she needed sleep._

“It was originally built in World War II as an air-raid shelter,” Sherlock announced, as if they were tourists on an overpriced walking tour. “It was converted into the telephone exchange in secret by the government in the 1940s, meant to be used only for queen and country’s most confidential. 200 workers, a bunker, switchboards – But in 1954, the place vanished from all public record.”

“Candy Apple,” Sally muttered.

Sherlock nodded and continued, “In 1955, however, a report appeared in the Daily Express, detailing why 1 million pounds of tax payer dollars was being invested in paperweights. Naturally, the government systematically saw to the information leak, but the damage was done. ”

“You can’t count on the curious to keep secrets,” murmured Sally, slipping her hands into her pockets with her flashlight. Although, compared to the air above, the tunnel breeze was mild. _People are freezing sleeping on the streets, while this place gathers mothballs._

“Listen, Sally-” Sherlock stopped. Eyes narrowing at the lowering of his voice, Sally turned to look at him in the tunnel.

From his shirt pocket, Sherlock drew the dampened note they’d found in the storage room at Hellingly. He held it out to her, lips pressed tight as he did. Sally took the note. Glancing down at the words between her fingers, she read the words Sherlock had covered when they had been in the car. Under the name Aberline Smith read-

“Come alone?!” Sally whispered, shoving the note in his hands. “I could get us both killed. There’s no cell reception down here, Sherlock! What do you think I can do if you wind up dead?”

Pressing his knuckles into his eye sockets and pulling them away, Sherlock glared at her, “Sally,” he breathed. I’m a POI and you’re my shadow. I need you to be the good detective I know that you are and do you your job.”

Sucking in her breath, Sally allowed herself a full second of utter shock at the… _compliment_? - Before drawing herself up. “Okay, I’ll keep to the shadows,” she whispered. Sherlock turned to keep walking, but Sally grabbed his arm. “One thing,” she hissed. “One hair on my neck on end and it’s over.”

When he nodded she released him and watched him proceed down the middle of the tunnel.

 

The buzz of the electrics, the distant trains in the walls, and the sharp inhales of his own breath kept Sherlock’s bones company as his heart threw itself against them. Hesitation hung in over him like a bad smell, as if hesitation was the air he was breathing. It made him feel as if he was living inside the mouth of a shark, hoping it would not notice his footfall.

A near silent _snick_ disturbed the ambience of the tunnel.

 Sherlock froze.

Halting his next exhale and closing his eyes, he focused. In his head, his other senses stretched out like a cat attempting bath its whole body in the sun. _Maybe it was nothing…God, he could use a smoke…_

_SMOKE!_

Breaking into a run, Sherlock swerved left into a service tunnel. Much narrower than the main one he’d just turned off, Sherlock remembered to breathe as he pushed his way forward toward the smell of nicotine.

When he stopped, Sherlock remained as solid as the rounded walls around him. What Sherlock Holmes saw in the service tunnel, framed with twisting rusting pipes, lit with tenuous fluorescents and second hand light was-

“Oh, ‘ello,” Sebastian Moran flicked a cigarette butt onto his boots.

Leaning on the wall, he lit another and curled his lips around the end. His next words dordled off his lips around the cigarette. “27 hours you took, damn. Lost the bet, again. Jim always told me I was shit when it came to chance. ‘pose that’s what happens when you know ain’t no such thing…” he trailed off. Sherlock edged forward, words boiling their there way up his throat. “Anyways, we-”

“Whose we, Moran?” Sherlock spat as he drew level with him in the shadowy tunnel. “You and Jim? You and Trevor?”

Moran chuckled. The hollow human gesture echoed tenfold off  the walls. Sweat trickled down his wrists from his palms, every nerve in his body was coiled to spring. But Moran wasn’t moving. Shoulders slumped against the wall with a cigarette in his mouth, he was bored…He was waiting.

The question coarsed through Sherlock until he felt like a cartoon with question marks for curls.

“How many times do I have to tell you, Sebastian,” an irritated voice snapped. “There is no ‘we’”

And Sherlock’s spine froze over as the owner of the voice strode out from the darkness of the tunnel.

All pale skin, bright eyes and ebony black waves for hair, all the molecules in the world that made up Irene Adler smirked less than 3 meters from where he stood in the tunnel.

A hand slammed into his chest-

“Easy there, Mr ‘Olmes.”

The Woman chuckled. It reverberated around them until Sherlock could feel it in his skull. She smiled, “Did you miss me?” The lights stuttered, though not quick enough for Sherlock to miss the wink Irene Adler dared to toss at him.

His next words sounded less like words than knives he was pulling from his chest. “What,” snarled Sherlock, “the _hell_ have you done?”

The Woman sighed, irritated. “Not done, darling – _doing._ And what I am doing is ensuring you don’t make a mess of my plans.”

A quiver of light, less than a flinch of a second and Sherlock launched himself forward, but Moran was too quick. Whatever it was, was over in less than 2 seconds. The scrimmage between himself and Moran didn’t even last long enough to echo around the tunnel.  

Sherlock’s knees slammed into the concrete, Moran securing his arm behind his back as pain shocked his limbs.

Folding her arms, Irene crouched down until her eyes were level with Sherlock’s, “Now, Mr Holmes,” she said, her voice a purr of polite menace. “Moran can either lock you in a sewer sell, or you can behave and not waste the little time we have.”

“What did you do to me?”

“Mr. Holmes, you know hurting you is not my intention.”

Sherlock’s cackle simmered off his lips as Irene sighed, straightening up. “Moran-”

Sherlock threw his free hand up, “Alright, fine!”

Irene nodded at Moran. “Let him go.”

Moran hauled Sherlock unceremoniously to his feet. Now upright, Sherlock pulled his coat around himself. “Now, if you’ll all follow me.” Gesturing to the dark with red painted nails, Irene began walking down the tunnel. Sherlock stole a glance over his shoulder. Plucking a cigarette from his mouth Moran nodded towards where Irene had disappeared into shadow.

“You can follow, or I can escort you,” Moran stated, nudging Sherlock into moving with a nod.

In single file Sherlock Holmes, Sebastian Moran and Irene Adler filed down into London’s unknown underbelly.

 

 

Sebastian Moran loved what he did, but what he did – unfortunately – involved interactions with human beings. See, people tended to overcomplicate his work by being in his line of fire, or preaching, or breathing, or making excuses for all of the above. When he had joined the army, he hadn’t joined for queen and country, to see the world, or fight for some bastard’s sanctimonious cause, none of that.

He had joined because he only had two emotions: the one when he hit his target and the one where he collected his recompense for doing so. Once he realised a uniform wasn’t necessary for either, he went AWAL and made a habit of lending his skillset exclusively to those influential enough in dark corners to keep him hidden in them.

Although, being Sherlock Holmes’ shadow wasn’t as fun when Sherlock knew what was behind him. Sebastian pulled another cigarette from his belt.

“Put them away, Moran,” Adler barked. “Air gets fumy down here.”

Sebastian rolled his eyes and let go of the cigarette.

They had been walking for 10 minutes down the inclining tunnel in an increasingly palpable silence. Mr Holmes had not ceased his glare at Moran’s employer, nor had he spoken. He hadn’t tried to run, neither. Which meant that Irene Adler’s insane plan might just work.

 Irene stopped, holding out a hand so Mr Holmes did the same. Metal scraping against metal bounded down the tunnel from where Irene had stopped until a rush of warm air rustled the hair in Moran’s eyes. The air tasted stale, of forgotten progress and neglect. After she pushed the door aside, Irene gave a mock bow.

“After you.”

Sherlock didn’t movie.

Sighing, Irene shook her head, settling him with a resolute smile, “Don’t tell me you came all this way for nothing.”

He scowled at her before stepping over the threshold, Moran treading silent behind him. Sebastian bolted the door behind the three of them.

Unlike the dimly lit tunnel they had just vacated, the Kingsway Telephone exchange was dazzling in it’s Candy Apple walled glory. Well, for an abandoned bunker beneath London anyway.

Lights hummed in an uninterrupted glow above them, illuminating the 3 low tables and the laptop hugging people huddled around them. None of whom looked up at their entrance and Irene Adler didn’t bother acknowledging them as she waved an impatient hand to Sherlock and Sebastian to follow. The two men stayed behind her as she lead them into a corridor lined with buzzing mainframe blocks, past another anti-chamber with two pool tables gathering dust until finally-

“After you, Mr Holmes…” Irene indicated the darkness beyond the door she had just unlocked.

“Why?”

“Because, once you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains however improbable must be the truth. And I need you to know the truth before this goes any further. Once you do, you will comprehend my intention and that there is no way of stopping me.”

Still standing behind Holmes for good measure, Moran raised an eyebrow at Irene Adler. But her eyes flickered back to the detective standing between them.

Sherlock inhaled, “If there’s no way of stopping you, why bring me here?”

Her lips curled upward, indicating the dark beyond her red painted fingernails, “After you, Mr Holmes.”

Sebastian watched each of Holmes’ mussels coil, as he stepped through the door.

***

Beep

Beep

_Beep_

_“Right, lift – 1, 2, 3-”_

_Beep._

_The world contained too much color for Molly’s liking. Everything was made of noise, yet she couldn’t find her body in it. At least she wasn’t dead,_ she thought.

“We’ll be back to check on her in an hour,” a voice beyond her said.

“Thanks.”

_Greg?_

_And she was made of pain, her bones replaced with white hot knives._

“Whoah- whoah sit back, alright? Don’t aggravate it.” A blur of silver and tan broke the sterile white and Molly slowly understood that the weight pressing the skin of her arms were hands. Aesthetic consumed her like the smell of antiseptic all around her. For a while, that smell was the only thing that told her she was awake.

After a finite forever, her brain dragged her eyelids upward. Blinking, this time her eyes adjusted. Too afraid to move her head, Molly rolled her eyes to her right.

Greg Lestrade sat in the leather chair beside her. Asleep, with his chin in the palm of his hand. Molly’s lips crept up into a smile.

“Gre-” She might have been gargling shrapnel. Her voice sounded less like spoken communication and more like rust being cleared with a cheese grater. But the noise was enough to wake Greg.

He leaned over the gap between the chair and her bed, “Hey, you’re awake.”

“Are you…?” she trailed off. Anaesthetic was keeping pain from her nerves. But the slumbered agony in her back made movement feel like a snare, like when you know someone is staring at you just outside the corner of your eye. But the body by nature is never still while it lives, something Molly had never been more acutely aware of when all she wanted to do was run.

“Who shot me?” she mumbled.

Greg’s hand disappeared behind him and returned with a plastic cup of water. The bright orange straw swaying in and out of her focus, before he leant forward and held it gently up to her lips. Only after Molly had gulped it down, did he answer.

“Anderson and his team are analysing the bullet now,” Greg placed the cup of water back on the bedside table as he spoke. “They’ll text as soon as they know.”

Molly tilted her head in pursuit of the least painful version of a nod she could think of. The anaesthetic was filling her head with warmth and echoes. The scratchy hospital sheets swallowing her back down into sleep.

A nurses’ voice resurfaced her senses,

“…and we just need to do a physical examination of the entry point so if you wouldn’t mind stepping outside for a moment, inspector.”

Somewhere to her right, a door clicked shut. Dull heels clicked around her bed until they didn’t. Molly dragged her eyelids up again.

She was 99% sure that the unfocused dark shape above her head was a woman. But the mask over her nose and mouth was as much hindrance to confirming her identity as Molly’s groggy vision.

“Miss Hooper?”

She was whispering. _Why was she whispering? The locked door meant this was a private room…_

“Miss Hooper, I need you to blink if you can understand me.”

Molly did as she was asked, unsure if this was part of the exam. But something twisting in the depths of her numb stomach told her it wasn’t. The blinking cleared her vision somewhat at any rate, and Molly now saw that the nurse had silver coiled hair pulled up into a bun.

“Miss Hooper, it is vital for yours and Mr Holmes’ safety that you do not tell anyone that Jim Moriarty is watching you. He is here in the hospital and will be in touch with you soon.”

Molly’s lungs stumbled into overdrive-

“Shhhhh, rest. Nothing will happen to you while you are here. But I need you to tell me everything he has said to you when he leaves. Can you do that for me?”

“How,” Molly breathed, the word sticking to the roof of her dry mouth. “How do I know I can trust you?”

“Dear child,” said the nurse as she fluffed up Molly’s pillows. Molly noticed the sudden lilt in her vowels, “My name’s Linley and as long as you are my patient, you are completely safe.” 

***

 On a good day (good being any day he didn’t consider smoking 20 cigarettes at once), Sherlock Holmes’ grip on reality could be best described as…hyperbolic. This was not to say it was unstable, but it was a sensitive tempestuous thing he did his best to keep to himself.

However, standing between Irene Adler and Sebastian Moran beneath London’s streets in a secret abandoned military bunker was not exactly the most contusive situation for calmness.

Beneath the night above them, it took a few seconds for his eyes to adjust the dimness of the space he had entered. Rust and industry permeated the air down here. The trickling hiss of water on metal somewhere above him told him the ceilings were high. An arm brushed his elbow.

“This way,” Irene’s hands lit up, the shard of light from her torch temporarily blinding and Sherlock had a strange feeling that they had done this before…All he could see of Irene Adler was her outline against the beam of light from her torch. She wasn’t Irene as much as she was the idea of her impressed into the dark. Maybe that’s all he’d really ever known of her… _But they HAD done this before…_

Sherlock shuffled forward, pursuing the click of her boots, sifting through his memory with gritted teeth. _Underground… They had been underground, but they had run…_

Sherlock tore at his eyes, dug his fingers into his skin and dragged down his cheeks. _The memory was there. Right there._ It was here. It was… _this._ But like Irene’s silhouette, his memories were suggestions sitting just outside the light. And possibly leading him into a trap.

 “Here.” Sherlock blinked as Irene shoved the torch into his hands, not realising she had stopped. They were shoulder to shoulder, while the scuffle behind them indicated Moran had paused a few feet away. Sherlock looked down at the torch and back up to Irene’s pale cheeks. “Walk for 3 metres and look to your left,” Irene said, as if she was telling him to get a cup out of the cupboard for her. But her eyes gave her away, sparking too bright for the dull shadows playing on her face in the torchlight.

Sherlock swallowed his pulse as it threatened to make its way up his throat.

“3?” he confirmed.

Irene nodded.

Setting his eyes ahead, Sherlock flicked the torch between his fingers until it light his way. A few years ago when he had been trying to quit smoking, he’d measured exactly how far his step was. John had mocked him, but it had meant he’d rarely needed to measure any short distance with anything but his own body. Three meters was 6 and a quarter steps.

_1_

_2_

_3_

Unlike the tunnels he and Sally had entered through, these only had pipes crisscrossing on his right. The left wall left bare.

_4_

No, it wasn’t. There were doorways carved into the concrete.

_5_

His torchlight fell on jagged bars.

_6_

The shadows recoiled as Sherlock pierced them with Irene’s flashlight. Sherlock turned to the left, facing the jagged bars with sweat slippery on his palms. Holding the torch steady, he raised it to chase the rest of the darkness from the cell.

Sherlock’s lungs dissipated inside his ribcage, pushing all his oxygen out of his body. His heart scurrying to keep pace with his ragged breaths.

A man lay unconscious on the floor. The three piece suit adorning his body splattered in bloodstains, no doubt hailing from the steady flow from his nostrils and finger nails. Clearly Caucasian, his receding hairline was decorated with bruising and his rattling breaths echoed enough for Sherlock to hear them where he stood, a good 5 meters away.

His name came out of Sherlock’s mouth like a cough.

“Victor?” he spluttered.

The mass of dishevelment stirred until a pair of heavily lidded eyes met Sherlock’s glare.

“Mr Holmes,” he croaked. “At las-” He heaved, wretching into the damp concrete. But Sherlock had already turned on his heel, storming back to where he knew Irene stood. When he reached her, he kept walking. His rumbling strides echoing around him as he shoved Moran aside.

Heat throbbed in his veins and in his chest. It dripped down his nose in drops. But his rage kept him from any task that wasn’t directly related to leaving these tunnels. Shouts and footsteps echoed behind him. He kept moving.

Irene had taken him to the bunker the long way, but he didn’t need his genius IQ to know that a government built military bunker didn’t expect its fat cat funders to clamber up and down 2 stories worth of ladders. In any maze, you keep to the right.

Less than 2 minutes he found a set of stairs with a bolted door at their top. Taking those two at a time, the dull thud of Sherlock’s shoulder hurling into the door drowned out Irene and Moran’s shouts bellow him. With a rush of cool air, the sweat on his forehead prickled as the 5am April air tumbled in and he threw himself out into it. Sherlock scrambled behind the door.

1, 2, 3, 4-

Panting, Irene Adler burst through. Sherlock slammed the door behind her and Irene snapped around to face him, but Sherlock grabbed a crowbar leaning against the scaffolding of the building and jammed it across the door. Once in tight, Sherlock heard the unmistakable _thunk thunk thunk –_ followed by a parade of muffled swearing-

“You won’t hold Sebastian off for long,” drawled Irene. Sherlock turned on his heel and brushed her aside, leading the pair of them out onto the street. The heels of his scuffed up shoes slicked on the damp of the rain he hadn’t heard. Sweat dripped into his eyes. The cool breeze on his collarbone on his scarfless neck surprising him as he walked.

“Stop,” Irene grabbed his sleeve, breathing heavy in the cool air. The steam of her breath dissolving in front of her nose as Sherlock twisted his body to face her.

They were standing outside a darkened paraphernalia store. The glass of crudely shaped bongs glinted dismal and judgemental beneath a dead neon sign. Sherlock said nothing as he let his eyes bare down on her. His mouth was dry, but the air tasted of sweat and fury as head throbbed and pulsed.

Irene dropped his sleeve without looking away, “Let me explain.” Sherlock clamped his mouth down over the torrent of retorts, sitting like acid in the back of his throat. “You’re going to want to help me.”

Sherlock’s whole body held his breath before he flung his laughter in her face. Almost bent double with the force of his hysterics, he circled her.

“My help?” he breathed, swallowing back his laughter. “You’ve made it explicit you don’t need my help,” He spat, “Because people who need my help don’t use me, lie to me, tamper with my memory, lead me on a wild goose chase and orders the world’s most dangerous hitman to shoot my friend.”

Irene folded her arms and sighed. “Is that why you brought me out here? To attend your pity party?” She rolled her eyes, slipping in a snigger before she continued, “you probably think you’re being righteous.”

“Oh, and frame me for murder,” he snarled.

Irene tutted, “Darling, there’s a difference between being the decoy and the common denominator.”

Sherlock leaned in so his nose was inches from hers and hissed, “And you’re about to learn the difference between being my ally and being my enemy.”

He barely had time to saviour the furrow creasing her forehead before everything around them shot up with bright light. Sherlock heard the cock of a pistol before his eyes readjusted to see Sally Donovan clapping Irene Adler in handcuffs.

“Irene Adler,” said Sally. “You’re under arrest on charges of suspected treason, conspiracy and murder.” Irene said nothing, but fixed Sherlock with a scowl to topple empires as Sally and the female officer by her side escorted Irene Adler to the police vehicles lining the street.

The damp road seemed soaked with the flashing of red and blue. Voices muttered all around Sherlock. Whether they were the officer’s or civilians he didn’t care.

Or rather, he didn’t have time to between hands securing his wrists in cool metal cuffs.

His heart screamed between his ribs, uncertainty churned in his empty stomach as he pulled against the arms restraining him.

“Get your hands off me!” But the two officers merely shoved him forward. Panic erupting in his veins, Sherlock searched the road for Sally. He found her standing beside the car of which a male officer was holding open. Undoubtedly for him. “What the hell is this, Sally?” he spluttered

Sally didn’t look up from her phone. Shrugging, she replied, “It’s like your friend said,” Sally scowled at him, “you’re the common denominator.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hello, lovelies!! thank you for reading!!!
> 
> I'd make up some dramatic excuse for the gap between this chapter and the last but the truth is 7 seasons of modern family don't watch themselves and i had two birthday cakes to consume BUT now Sherlock s4 has an airdate (jan 1st!!!) I am writing like crazy (the chapter after this is already done!!!) to finish this before then. I won't say much other than this chapter contains the last of the flashbacks to the post-reichenbach period. And this is a story I wrote more about Irene Adler as a character in her own right than her relationship to Sherlock (but of course these things coincide so stay patient!) but I really wanted to give Irene a story of her own and that's what this story is and I hope you are enjoying it and either way I thank you for reading it. Hope your day is nice!!
> 
> hmu on tumblr/twitter/youtube i'm always @akajustmerry
> 
> Merry xoxo


	6. The Package From No One

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> While Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler sit handcuffed to desks in Scotland Yard, Molly Hooper remains in hospital with a bullet wound. With her friends in disarray, who could possibly be paying Molly's bedside a visit? Can Scotland Yard really contain Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes?

Handcuffs were dust to Irene Adler, things she could almost too easily shake off. But she had the slightest inkling that Sergeant Sally Donovan of  Scotland Yard would become much less attractive if she did.

The ride to the station had been a silent one. Sherlock had been crammed into a different vehicle and the only time anyone broke the quiet commute was when Irene fidgeted with her fingers and the rattling of the cuffs spurred half assed grunts of dissension from the officers escorting her.

Once the car pulled up in front of the glossy station, Irene allowed the officers to direct her up a lift, down a flight of stairs and into the least decorative interrogation room that Irene had ever been forced to wait in.

A fly floated in crooked circles in her cup of water, it’s legs still twitching from the moment before when it had decided on swimming. _Poor decision._ Irene couldn’t tell now if it was still buzzing or if the light above her head had taken its cue in the silence.

Raising her head a little, her reflection gaped at her in the bent glass and turned the collarless blouse beneath her blazer to a pale blue smudge slapped across her features. She resisted the urge to yawn. Partly in an effort not to appear bored, but mostly because her distorted reflection would probably make her laugh and that was worse.

“Did you not hear my question, Miss Adler?”

Irene blinked her way back into the conversation she was supposed to be having with Sergeant Sally Donovan. She straightened up and met the other woman’s glare across the interrogation table separating them.

Licking her lips, Irene sighed. “Any plans for this evening, Sally-? Oh- Wait, do you prefer Sergeant Donovan or-?”

“I’d prefer that you answered my question.”

Irene chuckled, “Yes, I’m sure you would. But that’s not going to happen and since we’re chatting-”

“We’re not chatting. You are being interrogated for conspiracy, fraud and treason.”

“But not charged,” Irene leaned her cheek inside her palm, propping her head up with her elbow as she continued, “So, what are your plans for the evening?”

Scowling, Sally flicked a few rogue curls from her eyes and leaned back in her chair. The legs of it scraped on the concrete and Irene saw her wince, wary at the sound. “I’m going to get to the bottom of you and your operation.”

Irene traced patterns in the condensation of her plastic cup and licked her lips, “at least buy me a drink with no insects in it first.”

Sally didn’t crack. But Irene didn’t need her to. Minutes passed in this manner: Irene leaning her cheek on her palm under Sally’s textbook glare of contempt. Somewhere in the room a fly that had not yet ended its life in Irene’s water hummed.

“You’re not going to make me talk about anything I am not in the mood to divulge, Sargent,” Irene yawned. “So, you might as well make some alternate plans for the evening.”

“No? Why are you here then?”

Irene drew herself up until her eyes were level with Sally. “Let’s just say, you’re not exactly the person I want to talk to.”

 

In the next room, Sherlock was ignoring his interrogator. A bumbling twenty something, Detective Mace was not exactly engaging, asking questions that diverted him entirely away from answers that would be useful for the case.

 Sherlock felt hot all around his edges. His blood was molten, crawling under his skin. Reality was beyond the fuming aura his rage had constructed to keep him from trusting his senses-

_She’s in the next room._

_She’s in the next room._

_IRENE ADLER WAS 4 FEET AWAY IN THE NEXT ROOM._

“Why do you think only you could follow the clues?” Mace stuttered, managing a furtive glance at Sherlock from behind the case files.

Sherlock rolled his eyes, “Did Sally write these questions for you, Detective?”

Blinking, Mace scrambled- “That is irrelevant-!”

The door burst open and Sally stood in the entrance to the interrogation room. “Get him up,” she ordered. “Now.”

Without any kind of ceremony, Mace and his back up officer uncuffed Sherlock from the table and shoved him from the room.

“Where we taking him, Sargent?” asked Mace.

“Next-door,” Sally answered.

 

Molly Hooper was starting to regain entrance into the full use of her senses. She was now able to stay conscious for increments of 10 minutes before the morphine derivative sent her back down into dreamless dozing.

Since  Sherlock had been arrested on suspicions of conspiracy and treason, Greg had finally left her bedside to go and sort things out down at the precinct. Leaving Molly alone, hungry and wondering if the Jamacan Nurse who had told her to report on Moriarty’s doings was a hallucination. The only evidence that it wasn’t was a small slip of yellow paper with what looked like a phone number and the words ‘Victor Trevor’ scribbled on it.

While she understood that the private hospital room was a privilege not granted to all patients, she would have preferred a room with witnesses. With her body and brain half numb from pain and painkillers, a second, third, fourth lot of senses would have been a small comfort, even if they weren’t fully conscious.

Molly was still clumsily reaching out with her eyes and ears when she heard the door to her room slide open. Upright in bed, it wouldn’t have been difficult for Molly to turn her head and greet the visitor, but she clamped her eyes down onto the night outside her window and Greg’s empty seat.

A whisper of cologne skittered up between the cannula in her nostrils. Her body went from still too rigid, the bullet wound in her back protesting silently. The cologne was enough, but her intruder announced himself anyway.

“My my my, moll bear,” Jim tutted. “What have you done to yourself?” He walked around the bed and lowered himself into Greg’s chair. “This is a new level of attention seeking behaviour,” he chuckled. “Did you think a bullet in you would stop me?”

“Someone did,” Molly croaked.

Jim leaned in close enough for Molly to smell his next words, “Victor Trevor did. Apparently. I have no idea why my colleague would be interested in someone so insignificant, but they pulled his specially made bullet from your spine.”

Morphine making her eyes into anchors, Molly fought to stay conscious. “Why are you here?” she mumbled. “What do you want?”

The room, his breath, the cologne, it was all dissolving into the inky blackness of the absence of dreams. But somewhere the dark whispered above her,

“I want my empire back from Victor Trevor.”

 

 

 

Sally Donovan watched Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes through her own opaque reflection. The glass of the two-way mirror wobbled with the sound of their voices, the pair of them appeared less than happy to be sat opposite from one another. But appearances weren’t everything. The audio crackled in time to the movement of their lips as Sally listened.

“You look awful,” said the woman. Sally couldn’t see Adler’s face, but her shoulders shifted as she spoke.

Leaning back in his chair, Sherlock rolled his whole body forward with his eyes before he responded. “No.”

“No, you don’t look awful?” replied Irene.

“Earlier you asked me if I missed you. The answer is no.”

Irene sniggered, “Clearly.”

Heat sprinted up Sherlock’s cheeks, turning them scarlet against his pale features.

Sally shoved her tongue between her teeth, brow furrowed. For the second time in the last twelve hours, she was faced with uncomfortable evidence that she didn’t have Sherlock Holmes figured as well as she thought she had and it made her like him even less.

“What do you think they want us to talk about?” Adler asked, flicking her hair at the mirror Sally stood behind.

“Incriminating confessions, I suppose,” sighed Sherlock, his glower unchanged as Irene Adler leaned toward him. Sally watched, keeping her ears pricked

“I’ve downloaded over 200 films illegally,” she whispered, conspiratorially. “It’s just hard to find time to go to the cinema when you’re supposed to be dead.”

“It’s also hard to find time for the cinema when you’re trying to track down 2 years of your life you can barely remember.”

“But you can remember now, can’t you? I saw it, down in the tunnel.”

“That’s not the-”

“Darling, do you really want to have this conversation inside a fishbowl?”

“If it means you can’t avoid participating, yes.”

“Why do you think I would put you through all this and not give myself the opportunity to-”

“Gloat?” Sherlock cut across her.

A thunk behind Sally made her flinch the door to the anti-chamber open and closed.

“What the hell is going on, Donovan? ” Greg snapped between catching his breath. “Your orders were to shadow Sherlock Holmes! Not arrest him and appoint yourself head on this case!”

Sally tried and failed not to grit her teeth, “Well, in your absence, there was not a lot of options. Someone had to act.”

Dragging his palm down his face, Greg groaned and froze when his eyes settled on Irene Adler beyond the glass.

He blinked, slowly lowering his hand. “Who,” he asked, “is that?”

“Did you actually listen to your voicemail?” Sally hissed, facing him.

“Up to the point where you said that you’d arrested your POI and taken charge of this case,” he snapped back.

“We suspect she’s responsible for those bodies in the morgue.”

“Okay. But why is she in there with Sherlock?”

Sally raised a finger to her lips and nodded to the pair in the interrogation room.

Except, Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes were no longer there, their handcuffs left shining dully under the fluorescent glare of the light above the table.

 

 

 

The employee population of Scotland Yard had never liked Sherlock and, since Sally disgraced the precinct after Sherlock’s arrest 3 years ago, they weren’t exactly favourable to her either. As Sherlock slipped out of the Scotland Yard precinct foyer unhindered, these apparent facts proved their advantage.

“Are we being followed?” Sherlock breathed, the cool air of the absurdly early morning cooling the sweat on his temple.

“No,” Irene hissed back, keeping pace beside him as they strode out into the night. Irene pulled the scarf she’d lifted from a female officer from where she’d wrapped it around her head, while Sherlock fluffed up his flattened curls and shivered in the absence of his overcoat.

A smile quirked his lips toward his eyes, “the art of disguise,” he muttered.

“- is hiding in plain sight,” finished Irene.

Sherlock didn’t look at her as they twisted and turned through London’s streets, shadows long and lanky under the orange glow of the street lamps. Irene’s breaths dissolved in puffs of steam before her, the night pressing her forward.

“What are you going to do if they find Trevor?” Sherlock asked.

“They won’t. Sebastian will take care of it.”

“They’ll still find your base of operations,” Sherlock pointed out.

Irene’s lips curled. “Sebastian is taking care of it,” she affirmed.

After a moment, he asked her, “Do you know what I’m going to do next?”

“I could hardly claim clairvoyance, Mr Holmes, but my anticipations are rarely inaccurate.”

Every syllable skittered through the middle of Sherlock’s brain. For a brief second – no - For the tiniest fragment of a second that could still be considered the perceivable passing of time, London’s nightscape flickered as if someone changed the channel of Sherlock’s vision to a scene that smelled of fog and damp leaves. A woman wearing faded surgical scrubs with skin as dark as the earth in the pots that surrounded her was taking a succulent from his fingers.

No sooner had she taken it from him then he felt his feet slamming inside shoes. Blinking, breathing, he was exactly where he was once more. The lack of food in his stomach more pronounced than 2 seconds ago, he re-gathered himself and kept walking. They were a good 4 blocks from the precinct now. No one was following them, but the best way to lose a tail is to get lost.

After they had walked another few blocks, Sherlock made a b-line for a graffiti worn telephone box nestled between a dark fish and chip shop and a long-closed arcade. Irene leaned against the outside of the door while Sherlock held the heavy phone to his ear (ignoring the cold) and reversed the charges.

 

 

In his dream, it was autumn and Mycroft Holmes had forgotten his umbrella. Not that it was raining, but the leaves that crunched under his Oxfords and  stuck to the shoulders of his waistcoat were cold and damp. All around him were trees, tangling and swaying, all red and orange blurs in the wind. He was running. Leaves blew up into his eyes, over his nose. There was nowhere to shelter but under the trees themselves. Now, he waded through them, feeling bugs and dead twigs squirming through the gaps into his clothes.

Up to his neck in them, Mycroft fought pointlessly against the deluge of the dead until it consumed him and he sat up in his bed.

It took him a moment to realise it had been his phone that had woken him. Rubbing the nightmare from his eyes, he squinted at the bright phone screen against his palm and frowned. After enabling the feature that allowed him to record phone calls, he slid the phone up to his ear.

“Yes?”

“Good morning, brother dear.”

Mycroft felt the frown line in his temple deepen as he pulled back his phone screen to check the caller I.D.

“I’m assuming there is a perfectly logical explanation as to why you are calling me off a public telephone at 5am in the morning?”

“I need a favour,” Sherlock muttered.

“I’ve told you, Sherlock. You’re out of strings to pull. Clean yourself up from whatever hovel you’ve spent the night in and go home.”

“Actually, I was wondering if you’d meet me there,” Sherlock said, speaking fast. “In 10 minutes.”

Mycroft groaned. “Why, Sherlock?”

“Because, Mr Holmes,” said a voice that made him sit bolt upright, “your little brother doesn’t trust me.”

 

 

 

Linley Parring swore in multiple languages under her tongue as her fourth call to Irene went straight to voice mail. Rolling her eyes, she pocketed the disposable cell and headed towards the lift that opened right outside Molly Hooper’s room.

She tried dialling Irene again whilst waiting for the lift, but the girl’s recorded voice was still all that greeted her for the effort. With a sigh, she stuffed the cell back into her bra as the thud of the lift announced its arrival.

Linley held perfectly still.

Jim Moriarty stood in the back of the lift behind the other heavy eyed occupants. A beanie and baggy green jumper adorning his person, he looked very unassuming to anyone not paying attention. But Linley wasn’t one of those.

Wiping any kind of purpose from her eyes, she kept them fixed on the inside of the lift, focusing on relaxing each one of her muscles as the world’s most dangerous criminal walked right past her. As soon as he passed, Linley slid into the lift. After hitting the second floor, the doors thudded closed and the lift lurched upward.

Her fingers sprinted across her phone screen until Irene’s voicemail found her ears again.

“Pick up, pick up, pick up-” there was a prolonged beep. Linley stuffed the phone inside her bra again.

Molly’s room was chilly and the girl herself was asleep. The smell of expired cologne had Linley’s nose crumpled as she approached the side of Molly Hooper’s bed. Brushing her fingers against the girls forehead, Linley glanced up at her vitals monitor. Everything looked relatively fine apart from the spike in her pulse 10 minutes ago.

“Miss Hooper?” Linley purred. “Miss Hooper, please-” Molly’s chin raised in response.

“Mmm,” she mumbled.

“Dear girl, I know you are tired. But you need to tell me what Jim Moriarty told you, just now.”

Molly replied with a slow parade of unintelligible mutterings. Continuing to brush hair absently from the young woman’s forehead, Linley leaned her good ear downward closer to Miss Hooper’s dry lips.

“He said he’s coming…”

“Coming for who?”

Molly sniffled, her sleepy breathing taking it’s time to prepare her words before - “Victor Trevor.”

And for the first time in months, a genuine smile curled over Linley’s teeth, “She did it,” Linley breathed to herself. “It’s working…”

“What is?” mumbled Molly, but Linley leaned town and kissed the girl’s head. “Don’t you fret, young one. Just rest. You are safe.” But the girl had already gone back to sleep and Linley was already dialling her phone again.

 

 

 

The night had all but retreated by the time Irene and Sherlock strode down Baker Street. The barely risen sun stained the sky purple and filled the air with the smell of dew and the sound of faraway traffic. _What was it like to have an unquiet morning? What was it like to wake to nothing but your own breathing?_

Catching her thoughts, Irene blinked herself back into the moment. Her and Sherlock’s journey between his phone call and here had been one without commentary, the pair of them simply keeping pace with one another, but never more than a step between them.

With Sherlock’s back to her and his apartment 2 blocks away, Irene relaxed her armour for a few strides.

She had learned as a child that partiality was power’s best ally. She learned that anger, hate, misery and even happiness were only ever to be shown when necessary and even then, only an exaggerated fraction, only a suggestion of something more...

Irene once imagined her heart as a ghost haunting her body, a restless entity only ever capable of showing parts of itself when circumstance forbid any other option, but never able to take a full or tangible form.

Of course, this had been true until she met the man 2 feet in front of her.

Her heart became a complexity in the presence of Sherlock Holmes, in that it became too many things at once and tangled her pulse with her predispositions in the chaos. If her heart was a ghost, then Sherlock Holmes was the only thing that terrified it and Irene Adler hated being afraid.

But for a brief second, she let that fear find its way to the surface of herself. Her heartbeat jittered just above her lungs, heat tiptoed to the edges of her cheeks and she felt her lips pull back into a smile. 3 seconds held her like this and then with the same efficiency, she reversed the process until she was focusing on London’s agitated dawn.

The bright red awning of Speedy’s café loomed out of the long shadows cast by the dimming street lamps and Sherlock blocked her path forward with his arm as Sherlock’s dottering land-lady, Mrs Hudson, shuffled sideways out of the apartment black door. Before she clicked the latch, however, Sherlock bounded forward and Irene slunk back into the shadows occupying the space between the parked cars.

“Mrs Hudson-”

“Oh, there you are, dear!” sighed the elderly woman. “Did you work it all out with Sargent Donovan?” A cool breeze carried her stale perfume over to Irene’s nostrils as she continued. “Look at you,” Mrs Hudson tutted. “When are you going to rest, Sherlock?”

Eye twitching, Sherlock ignored the comment. “Where are you going? Bit early to go see the married Paper-shop man-”

Mrs Hudson slapped his arm, but it was a hollow, familiar gesture, filled with the kind of warmth that made Irene feel… apart from them. “Oh, hush you!” she said, “I’m going to pick John, Mary and Ella up from the airport. Apparently Harry’s intervention went without hitch this time.”

“Well, there’s a first time for everything,” Sherlock replied, failing to hide his impatience. But Mrs Hudson got the hint.

“Best be off, dear,” she muttered, before squeezing his arm and heading down the street to her car. “By the way,” she called over her shoulder, “a parcel came for you late last night. I left it in your kitchen,” and with Sherlock’s grunt of a thank you, Mrs Hudson unlocked her car and swung herself down into it.

Irene waited until the car’s engine had completely faded before slinking forward out of the shadows and stepping through the door Sherlock held open for her.

 

 

 

It had been almost exactly 4 years to the day since Irene Adler had eyed Sherlock Holmes’ sofa in 221b. Eyeing it now, she couldn’t help but relish how much had changed since she last found herself in this room. For one thing, she wasn’t wearing Mr. Holmes clothes. For another, she wasn’t grovelling for his protection. Not anymore.

Not ever again.

Irene dropped herself onto the sofa, resting her boots on the coffee table while a large part of her marvelled that the furniture was entirely unchanged. Her eye caught a flash of white and blue by her shoelace.

Leaning forward, she pulled a map of Edinburgh from a pile of paper beside her boots. Brow furrowed, she continued skimming the rest of the papers.

Articles from the Edinburgh Daily News stared back at her, the headline, **_“Mysterious Motorbike Accident Claims No Victims”_** pulling the edges of her lips toward her ears before the article was dashed from her palms.

“You hypnotised me,” Sherlock grunted, shoving the article out of her reach. Grimacing, he shook his head. “No. Not you,” he squeezed his eyes closed and opened them again, “Linley, she did it…” he trailed off. “You made sure I couldn’t even contact my brother, after you finished with me.” Slamming his hands down on the coffee table, Sherlock glared at her. “You don’t have as much control of me as you think. I am not your Pavlov’s dog,” he growled.

Irene leaned forward until her head was level with his, his anger permeating the air in front of her and she matched his growl with her own, “I warned you that one day, I’d put you on a leash. But you didn’t listen.”

“And nor did I.”

Both Irene and Sherlock looked up to see Mycroft standing in 221b’s open door. He tipped his chin toward Irene as he closed the door behind him, “Miss Adler.”

“Good morning, Mr Holmes.”

Sherlock, on the other hand, eyed his brother with cautious contempt. Impeccably dressed in a three-piece suit, Mycroft moved, silent and tensed, to lean on his umbrella.

It was striking, really, that these men were brothers.

Where Mycroft Holmes was a lean efficient construction of straight edges and authority, his little brother was a stiff mass of curls and unease. Now, however, the pair of them stood identically expectant, glowering down at her from either side of the coffee table her boots rested on.

“I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here today,” Irene cast her words over the room, but it didn’t lighten its mood.

“Let’s do this quickly, shall we,” Mycroft sighed. “The police will search here again before daylight breaks.”

He fixed his little brother with a smirk, “Miss Adler was your underground contact you went off the grid with in 2011?” It was barely a question, more a statement dressed as one. Sherlock answered his brother’s sneer with a curt nod, but nothing further. With a brief eyeroll, Mycroft’s amused accusatory hybrid of a smile found Irene, “and I take that you decided to dishonour our agreement.”

From the corner of her eye, every single visible muscle of Sherlock’s body curdled as even the air seemed to hold its breath. The silence grappled with the apology half formed in Irene’s throat, but not before Sherlock’s voice fractured the silence.

“Our agreement?” Sherlock echoed, his words hoarse. Beads of sweat crawled down his forehead and now, it was Irene’s turn to glower at Mycroft.

Without breaking her scowl, she lifted her boots off the table. One after the other, she slammed them onto the floor before drawing herself up. Irene kept the coffee table between them. For Mycroft’s benefit, more than anyone else’s.

“I instructed he was not to be brought anywhere near this,” hissed Mycroft, brow furrowed, keeping his eyes militarily away from his little brother. “You agreed.”

Irene’s words came sharp, unwavering and slick, as she turned her head to face Sherlock’s stone-like stature, “Your brother has something he would like to tell you.”

Mycroft’s acidic snigger trembled off his lips, “Or?”

“Or I’ll burn your paper kingdom to dust.”

Irene had no need to elaborate. The oldest Holmes knew precisely how much her shadow eclipsed his world. Moreover, he knew she always followed through on her word. The brief silence pressed hot against her skin as Mycroft met his brother’s eye.

He took a deep breath. “Sherlock, all those years ago,” Mycroft  paused, “I knew you saved her. In fact,” he swallowed, “I was counting on it.”

Eyes unblinking, Sherlock remained silent, his shirt no longer rising with his breaths and Irene could see all the muscles in his neck tighten. Mycroft continued. “When you left my office on that night you doomed Miss Adler to her counterfeit fate, I didn’t let her go…immediately. You could say I was feeling kind,” drawled Mycroft. “I acted on your suggestion, locked her up, and we had a private but historical conversation heard only by myself and Miss Adler.”

Irene had the distinct impression Mycroft only added that last phrase to torment his little brother. Partly, because Mycroft had always struck her as a sadist, but mostly because Sherlock’s eye twitched, recoiling from the words.

Painting a smirk over his thin lips, Mycroft continued his monologue. “What followed-”

But the hum of a phone vibration drew Mycroft’s lips together mid-sentence. With a sigh, he reached into the pocket of his suit and frowned at the caller I.D.

“What?” he barked into the receiver, “Yes. I am aware, Gregory.” Mycroft scowled at Sherlock over his shoulder as he turned away from Irene to continue the call. “Why on earth would he come to me? He has a spare key to John and Mary’s-” he stopped, “I see…” Mycroft’s eye caught Irene’s. “Sherlock has been known to move around when he’s being chased. I suggest you station someone at all the usual hideouts, including Baker Street and you better make it fast before he catches wind.” Mycroft pulled the phone down from his ear and slid his thumb across the screen.

Detective Inspector Lestrade’s drained voice crackled from the phone speaker, “You’re right. I’ll send a team over there. ETA: 5 minutes.”

Irene and Sherlock’s eyes met for a brief moment, before Mycroft said, “Thank you. Oh, and Detective-?”

“Yeah?”

“Any accessories to my brother’s infringements will be dealt with directly by me and my council.”

“Of course, Mycroft.”

“Thank you, Greg.” Mycroft slid his thumb back across the screen, ended the call and slipped the phone back into the pocket of his trousers. Shifting his weight so he was no longer leaning on the umbrella, he was already at the door when he said, “I’ll leave Miss Adler to tell her own story from here,” he smirked. “But I’d talk swiftly, if I were you,” and with a nod, Mycroft’s condescending presence left Irene alone with Sherlock and her complete and all-consuming frustration.

Storming around Sherlock’s coffee table, Irene rounded on him, “I know I’ve lied to you a lot over the years,” she hissed. “But ‘we don’t have time to waste’ wasn’t one of them!”

Sherlock peeled his expressionless gaze from the doorway. His pale eyes bored down into hers and, for a moment, she was reminded how much taller than her he was. But Irene’s glower didn’t stutter.

“Proving a theory is never a waste of time, Miss Adler,” he replied, the words dripping with patronization.

Rolling her eyes away from the pointless stare-off, Irene turned on her heel and began rummaging through Sherlock’s apartment.  Lazy and pale, the half formed rays of sunlight had lit up the room in slithers, the early morning revealing a very different apartment to the one Irene remembered when she threw the curtain aside.

‘Apartment’  was no longer the right word for 221b Baker Street. Not when the floor groaned under the weight of piles of paper, mouldy takeaway containers and rusted (??) laptops. Not when the odour issuing from the kitchen made it a useless one, and the stench off piles of abandoned laundry infected the sunlit air. No, ‘apartment’ was not the right word. “Hovel,” suited better, or the cemetery of sanity.

Wrinkling her nose, Irene waded through the piles of paper and kicked aside disregarded electronics, reaching out a hand for the windowsill. When she threw the window ajar, the stale apartment air rushed out almost instantly and the shadowy sunlight clambered to take its place.

Down on the pavement, Irene thought the corner of her eye caught the edge of a movement. Flicking her gaze down, she scanned the road and found it empty but for a taxi and wrangled leaves drifting in its wake. Irene drew the curtains over the window she hadn’t opened and turned back to Sherlock. His silence boiled her blood.

“We’ve got minutes before the police get here. We need to leave,” Irene reminded him as he wondered into his kitchen.

The kitchen, Irene thought, had always looked last minute, like the person who designed this place had built all the other rooms before realising food was a necessary element of human survival and hastily relegated the kitchen in the corner in response. “Oh, lovely,” Irene sneered as Sherlock cleared bottles and beakers off his kitchen bench, “are you making tea for the authorities to rehydrate themselves while they clap us in handcuffs.”

Sherlock ignored her. After a moment, his search uncovered a parcel the size of a tissue-box and within seconds, Irene and Sherlock’s heads leaned together over where Sherlock placed it on the bench.

“Unmarked,” observed Irene, frowning at the bland paper wrapping.  Sherlock waved at her to give him space. Mutinously, Irene raised her head  back as Sherlock rested his ear on the air just above the parcel, his longer than usual curls just brushing the crinkled paper. Irene’s heart hammered in her ears. Sweat prickled along the goose bumps on her neck.

“Did you order something?” she said, lamely, in an attempt to tame the tension more than anything else.

“I take it you didn’t send it, then,” he muttered.

Irene shook her head, “Everything you did in the last 24 hours was designed to distance you from me.”

Sherlock gave her a withering look, but dropped his eyes back to the package. Picking up a nearby toilet plunger, he used the wooden end to nudge the package toward her.

“Open it”

Irene gaped at him, her eyes fleeing between his face and the parcel as her heart retracted against her ribs, “what if it’s explosive?” she spluttered, before lowering her voice and hissing, “The police will carry us off in pieces.”

Sherlock shrugged, but his eyes sparked like daggers. “Only if you touch it incorrectly and you always bragged how good you were with your hands.” He walked around the bench to lean against the doorway to her right.

A million innuendoes fizzled out in Irene’s lungs as she glared across the parcel at him, “why are you doing this?”

“Because,” he growled. “Once- just once. I want you to know what it is like to face the unforeseen consequences of your actions.”

“Even if it kills you, apparently” Irene scowled, swallowing back the dryness in her throat. _But if this was what it took to get him talking-_

Sherlock maintained his statuesque stubbornness, even when the distant high pitched rumble of police sirens, floated in through the ajar window. “Better act fast, Miss Adler,” he drawled and, for a moment, Irene recinded the statement that Sherlock Holmes was nothing like his older brother.

Breaths scampering through her nostrils, Irene ran her fingertips over the outside of the package until they ran into a fold. Gulping, trying not to clench her jaw, she peeled back the folds on both ends, lifted the paper, glimpsed the inside-

 and hurled it across the room toward the open window.

When Sherlock Holmes recalled what happened in the seconds after the parcel caught the edge of his windowsill, he could never decipher what precisely had happened. Although, he had narrowed it down to 3 distinct possibilities. The bomb detonating, shattering the glass, sending it flying into his hair, eyes and mouth was how each of the three scenarios began. The rest of those few seconds left his memory divided on whether the blast had thrown Miss Adler backward into him, she had attempted to protect him, or he had launched himself forward to shield her from the heated debris that used to be the sitting room of his apartment. But in every scenario, he and Irene Adler lay, all tangled limbs and bruises, under the remains of his armchair and the grains of glass scraping the insides of his cheeks that told him he had been screaming.

 

 

 

 

“And then she agreed to rehab,” yawned John Watson, shaking the lethargy of travel from his head, “although we all had to dish up some extra cash. She only agreed when we said her girlfriend could go with her. But, at least it didn’t take us a week like the last one.”

“It took three days, babe,” Mary pointed out. “The last one, I mean.”

Mrs Hudson giggled as she pressed the breaks at the traffic light, “And how was Ella on her first big trip?”

As if she had heard her name, baby Ella Watson mumbled sleepily in John’s arms.

“Marvellous!” John whispered, trailing his finger over the softness of his daughter’s 10 month year old nose. “Barely made a sound on the plan, did you?”

“Although, she has a very impressive set of bowels,” added Mary with a chuckle.

The three of them laughed until the traffic light turned green and Mrs Hudson joined the trickling traffic on the other side of the intersection.

“No trouble while we were away?” John asked, the careful casualness of his tone making Mary want to kick him a bit.

“He hasn’t slept in at least 4 days. Didn’t help that Molly called a dozen times- she needed his help with something. He’s been out for a day, or so. I saw him this morning,  but he didn’t mention where he’d been…I thought I heard him talking to someone before I ran into him outside, but he was alone…” Mrs Hudson’s voice faded. “Molly hasn’t come to get her car back after she dropped by yesterday. I’m not sure why she left without it, really.”

Turning his neck, John exchanged a raised eyebrow with Mary.

“Is everyone alright though, MS H?” she chirped.

“Oh, fine, dear- Well, fine for the times, let’s say.”

John readjusted his daughter in his arms and leaned his head back against the headrest.

“Never thought I’d be so relieved to have not missed anything,” John said.

But his whole body jerked forward as Mrs Hudson squeaked and slammed her foot onto the break. His daughters cries pierced the air, burned brake fluid filled John’s nostrils and he flung his head back around.

Mary’s knuckles were white, gripping the seat in front of her.

“Alright?” John asked.

Nodding, Mary released the seat and leaned forward to rest a reassuring hand on Mrs Hudson’s shoulder.

“You okay, Mrs H?”

But John didn’t hear Mrs Hudson’s reply. Looking through the windscreen, he had just realised where they had stopped. Or rather, he realised why.

Baker Street was not straight. At the southern end, it curled to cater to the private park a few blocks before 221b. Once he’d had to go in there to rescue Sherlock from the clutches of a very disgruntled neighbourhood watch after he had been spotted digging holes in the park’s freshly mowed turf (to this day, Sherlock hadn’t told him why).

Mrs Hudson had screeched to a halt just beside it. She had braked because their street had been blocked off. All at once John Watson realised that it wasn’t burning brake fluid making his eyes water. It was smoke.

Smoke rising from the apartment he had once called his home.

 

 

 

Pushing her way through the thick plumes of smoke, ash and thickly clothed firemen, Mary eventually found her way to now cracked footpath bellow 221b. Glass crackled under her boots as she kept a firm grip on Mrs Hudson’s arm with one hand and held her daughter tight to her chest with the other

“I need to talk to the officers,” Mrs Hudson announced in a timid voice. “Here, let me take Ella. She’ll be safer with me.”

Mary wanted to disagree, but she also wanted to chase after her husband who had just elbowed his way through 221b’s front door and Ella would be safer between Mrs Hudson and an army of police and paramedics. After ensuring Mrs Hudson had Ella secured in her arms, Mary crossed the road in 3 strides in pursuit of her husband.

If squeezing past people had been difficult out on the street, it became almost impossible in Baker Street’s tiny foyer. Dust swirled thick and fast in the air. Squaring her shoulders, Mary pushed and shoved her way up the two flights of stairs to 221b. Upon reaching it, however, she find it entirely empty but for the debris and scorched floorboards that made up the corpse of Sherlock’s apartment.

Mary couldn’t remember hearing chatter of an arrest, and the ambulances she had passed on street level were vacant of patients. Brow furrowed, she wondered back out onto the landing and reached into her pocket. As she had hoped, a minute old message from John light up the screen.

“I think he’s in 221A,”

Bewildered, Mary took the stairs 2 at a time. She had never been into the abandoned apartment bellow 221B. Well, vacant, she corrected herself. John had told her the story of Carl Power’s sneakers and Mrs Hudson never stopped bleating how she was never able to find tenants, but she had never actually seen the inside of the damp dingy basement apartment she now stood in front of.

Sid eyeing the space beyond her shoulder, Mary confirmed there was no one around to witness her entry and prized the door open.

“John?”

Her husband was standing, frozen, a few steps from the door, preventing it from opening fully. “John?” repeated Mary, trying to squeeze through the highly unreasonable slither of space the door allowed. Nevertheless, she sidled through the gap with only a smattering of grunts.

Damp and neglect assaulted her nostrils as soon as she closed the door behind her. The apartment was dimly lit. The only natural light stumbled through a few elongated windows, cluttering the room with more shadows than illumination. Mary’s eyes were still adjusting when she reached out and tugged John’s arm.

“We’ve been gone 3 days,” he was muttering, incredulous. “3 bloody days...”

Blinking, Mary waited the few extra seconds it took for her eyes to discern shapes in the dim, followed her husband’s line of sight and felt her jaw drop.

On the floor of the empty apartment, shadows sprawling over him, was Sherlock. An unconscious Sherlock. Sherlock with blood running down his face from a gash in his forehead. But that wasn’t what was shocking about his head, no.

The blood was being gently mopped from his cheeks with a teatowel by a woman who was cradling his head on her knees. Or at least, she had been, before John had entered.

“Oh, my God,” spluttered Mary, unable to help herself. “Irene Adler?”

The Woman looked up, “Pleasure to finally meet you, Mrs Watson.”

The sound of her voice reanimated John beside her and by the time Mary had drew her next breath, John was crouched beside his best friend.

“What happened?” asked John, breathless with all the questions he wanted to ask other than that one, while Mary walked around to crouch beside Irene Adler. She had never actually met the woman, but in a past life Mary had had to review her profile on more than one occasion and, of course, John had filled her in on his and Sherlock’s dealings with her.

Irene Adler cleared her throat, but the action did nothing to steady her trembling voice. “I don’t think he knew it was a bomb,” she replied, raising a shaking hand to wipe blood from her nose. “I told Sebastian to deliver a contingency plan, but-” she paused, “no one was meant to be here. It was only meant to be a distraction, but Sherlock had to talk to his brother.”

When the Woman finished speaking, Mary exchanged a grim look with John, who shrugged, shaking his head.  

“How long has he been unconscious?”

Mary smiled inwardly at the calm tone in her husband’s voice as he knelt beside his bleeding best mate, the army Doctor she’d not really known present and accounted for.

“In and out,” answered Irene, voice thick and croaked. “He wasn’t after the initial blast, suggested we come down here. To avoid the police.”

“Avoid the police?” repeated Mary, pulling a baby wipe from her pocket and pressing it into Irene’s hand as she continued.

“After we escaped,” continued Irene, wincing as she held the baby wipe to her bleeding nose.”

“Escaped from where?”

“Arrest, Doctor Watson.”

Their 3 conscious heads whipped around to stare up at a more bedraggled of Greg Lestrade. With his heavy-lidded eyes ending in deep shadows, the just visible bloodstains on the collar of his shirt and his hair an up ended mop, Greg Lestrade might have aged 20 years in 3 days John and Mary had been gone.

But Mary and John Watson stood up in unison, shielding Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler from the ever-gathering gaggle of SWAT officers trailing Lestrade’s shadow.

“They’re injured, Greg,” John pointed out, his voice equally as dangerous as it was calm. “You can’t question concussed suspects.”

“They’re not suspects,” Greg stated. “They’ve been charged with aiding and abetting war crimes, treason and murder-“

“Murder?” Mary barked, eyes widened.

“I don’t want to arrest either of you for obstruction of justice. Move out of the way,” snapped Greg as his officers spilled into the room. But John was eye to eye with him before Mary could register he had moved at all.

“What the hell did he do?” The question simmered off John’s lips, but Mary could hear the apprehension beneath it.

Greg raised a gloved hand and pointed a finger at Irene Adler. “That woman organised the murder of two innocent people, trespassed on private property and organised the attempted assassination of Molly Hooper - all so she could talk to him.” His accusatory index finger jerked toward Sherlock.

Behind Mary, Irene Adler was hauled gruffly to her feet by a heaving mass of SWAT armour and men’s deodorant, but she didn’t resist. Nor, did she make a sound when Sherlock was loaded on to a stretcher and taken from the room. “I think,” Greg said between the swift click of plastic being fastened around Irene Adler’s wrists. Again, she made no sound. “I think we let them have their chat. Don’t you?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thank you for your patience and your effort to read my work. 2016 has been a rather difficult year for me, but I have always found a slither of dependable brightness in your kudos, comments and occupying my thoughts with writing stories for you all. I hope you will stick with this story when Sherlock concludes in January and I hope you know how grateful I am that you have read and interacted with my work. Merry Christmas, happy new year and I will see you all again fpr the next chapter.
> 
> Love, Merry
> 
> hmu on anything @akajustmerry


	7. A Hint Of Chaos

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Baker Street half blown up, Irene Adler back from the dead, Sherlock Holmes arrested and one last player to enter the game...How much longer will Sherlock have to wait before he realizes what Irene Adler has been planning? Why has she gone to so much chaotic effort to keep Sherlock's attention?

“We were gone 3 days, Mary, 3 bloody days!”

“I know.”

“3 days and Molly’s in hospital with a bullet wound, Irene Adler is back from the dead, 221B is lucky to be one piece, some maniac committed a double homicide to get to Sherlock, and Mrs Hudson had no idea about any of it!”

“Seems we missed out on the bulk of the fun, I know,” Mary sighed, shaking her head.

“This is serious, Mary.”

Mary sniggered so violently, she almost woke baby Ella snoozing against her shoulder, “Since when did Dr John Watson separate seriousness from fun?”

But John didn’t get a chance to retaliate because Sergeant Sally Donovan entered Lestrade’s office. Lestrade himself, having gone to deal with the flocks of keen press that had gathered on the pavement outside, had left her in charge. Standing up from the seats across from Lestrade’s empty one, John and Mary turned to face Sally.

“How’s Sherlock?” Mary asked.

Sally exerted precious little effort not to show her annoyance at the enquiry, “He’s fine. Mild concussion, nothing serious, aggravated by sleep deprivation.”

“Is he conscious?”

Sally shook her head at John, “He’s resting in medical. When he wakes up I’m sending him into interrogation to talk to Irene Adler.”

John frowned, “She’s cleverer than him. I’ve seen it.”

“She’s made it very clear she has done all this to talk to him. If that’s the only way she will talk-”

“So, she’s in interrogation now?”  interrupted Mary.

“Yeah.”

“I want to talk to her,” John replied. “Please.”

“No. You’re already closer to this case then you should be, Doctor Watson.”

“She’s right, darling,” agreed Mary, disentangling Ella from her shoulder. Automatically, John held out his arms, his eyes reflecting nothing but the form of his sleeping baby girl. “Sherlock is your friend and Irene Adler was once an adversary case for the pair of you. We don’t know what leverage she has.”

“She’s got a point,” muttered Sally.

“Which is why you’re going to let me talk to her,” chirped Mary, standing up.

The words hung, dangerous and patient, in the air before Sally seemed to register them. Blinking profusely, she spluttered, “Why would I let you do that?”

“Because I am the only person in this station who has dealt directly with people like her, but has never met her.”

“I’ve met Moriarty,” John pointed out.

Mary bit back her patronising tone, “But you haven’t actually negotiated with people like him.” Locking her gaze with Sally’s, “Come on, Sergeant. If I fail, you can say I snuck in there and arrest me on the spot, if I get her talking you can take the credit. You can’t lose.”

Dragging her half-chewed nails through her coils, Sally Donovan weighed Mary Watson’s proposal for exactly 20 seconds before she sighed-

“You get 5 minutes.” 

 

 

Irene Adler had requested her removal from the interrogation room that Sally Donovan had placed her in. Not that she didn’t enjoy little luxuries like chairs and handcuffs, she was just a little too good at getting out of them. Thus, she was now in an isolation sell. Drawing her knees up to her chest, Irene continued the riveting task of picking lint and 221b’s debris off her trousers, a dull hum of her own melodic invention reverberating around her.

A rattle disturbed her tune and Irene raised her head from her lint covered trousers in time to see a woman entering her sell. A cluster of dirty blonde curls framed a set of rosy cheeks that crinkled up into a smile. The spark in her eye caught Irene’s gaze, the door bolted shut behind the woman and she stepped forward.

“Mrs Watson, I presume,” Irene purred.

“It’s Mary,”

“What can I do for you, Mrs Watson?” Irene flicked lint in her general direction.

“I just wanted to see if you were okay. You seemed a little shaken when John and I found you.”

The stitches above Irene’s left eye twinged as she pressed her lips together. “Thank you, but I’m fine and I will not be explaining myself to anyone until I speak to Sherlock Holmes.”

“That’s cool,” Mary shrugged, crouching down to Irene’s level. Irene found the action extraordinarily belittling. As if she was a child throwing a tantrum in the confectionery aisle at Tesco. In the same casually belittling tone, Mary Watson continued, “Why do you want to talk to him before anyone else?”

Irene clenched her jaw shut without breaking eye-contact, but the hand resting on her knee balled into a fist.

“Look,” Mary clapped her hands together. “I’ve been where you are. I’ve been on so many different sides, I get a little mad when people still think it’s as simple as a line separating them. You’re a schemer who understands the forces at work in the world more than most and you have enough power over the right people that you’re facing 10 lifetimes in prison and all you’re doing is humming.”

Irene issued Mary Watson a wink. “But,” Mary continued. “You didn’t plan on that bomb hurting Sherlock. From what I’ve managed to gather about what’s happened in the last 3 days, you’ve done everything you can to keep him out of harm’s way.”

Her insides hardened to led. Mrs Watson’s eyes flickered up and down Irene, but she remained still. After a moment of silence brimming with stubbornness, Irene paused her humming.

“Does this conversation have a purpose?” 

Mary shrugged, “Depends.”

Straightening up, Irene’s eyes narrowed at the woman opposite her, “On?”

“On how quickly you want to speak to Sherlock.”

Irene scowled at her, but before she could summon a retort Mary cut across her, “I’m not with the police. Like you, I’m not really with anyone-”

“Does Doctor Watson know that?” Irene sniggered.

“You,” she let the word sink into the air until it churned into the guilt pooling in Irene’s stomach, “know what I mean. For all the world’s political and social infrastructure, there’s got to be a just a hint of chaos underneath it all, right? Or else, all that structure’s got nothing to stand against.” Irene tried not to smirk as Mrs Watson lowered her voice to a whisper. “This is a bit pathetic,” she hissed, pulling out a pen and holding it out to her. “Sally gave me this. I haven’t recorded any of this discussion yet,” she added. “But you give them some kind of lead, even if it’s the scenic route to a dead end, I’ll get you to Sherlock.”

Laughter trickled off Irene’s lips into space between the two women until Irene could barely breathe. Stomach clenching, Irene clutched her side with her arm, failing to stifle her hysterics for a good few seconds. “Why on earth,” guffawed Irene, heat rushing up her neck into her cheeks, “do you want to help me?”

  7, or so gruelling seconds dragged by before Mary Watson placed the pen on the floor between them and clicked it. The click was soft for a recording device. Irene made a mental note of the make, raising her eyebrow at the woman opposite her, still waiting for her answer.

Mary shrugged. “Why wouldn’t I?”

 

 

 

Molly had been trying to drag her eyelids up and away from her eyes for what felt like an eternity, before the blurred shape of her nurse- No, Linley was her name – came into focus. Her lips were moving, making nothing but unintelligible mumbles while Molly’s ears stumbled out of sleep. But once her anesthetized brain remembered how to decipher English-

 “Yes, that’s where I heard they were taken,” Linley whispered. There was no audible reply, must be on the phone, “A woman rang, said she was a friend of- Only you and her have this number, Marlene – Okay, go, go- please, be safe.”

Linley stuffed the phone back down her shirt and turned to look at Molly. The monitors behind Molly began to squeal.

“Easy, girl. Easy…” The woman’s slender hands ushered Molly’s backside back against the mattress.

“Moriarty,” Molly half spluttered. “He was here, he was here, he was-!”

“Shhhhhh,” Linley purred, fluffing up Molly’s pillows before reaching for the plastic cup on the bedside table behind her. With her other hand, she pulled a straw from a pocket Molly couldn’t see.

“He took that number,” Molly croaked. “That bit of paper you left behind- he took it.”

Linley held the straw up to Molly’s lips. “Drink,” she said. Wrapping her lips around the straw, Molly sucked down the liquid in seconds. After returning the cup to the stand, Linley straightened up. “He won’t come back. Don’t fret. You did amazing.”

Whatever response Molly thought she had wanted to hear, it wasn’t that one. Her stomach tangled, churning with emptiness and the pain issuing from her shoulder. Meanwhile, Linley smoothed her bed-sheets unnecessarily.

“No, I didn’t. It’s my fault,” demanded Molly to no one in particular, her eyes burning.  Linley perched herself beside Molly, resting her hand on Molly’s exposed forearm. “Someone called me-” Molly sniffled. “-called me and told me to go into work early and unlock everything, or he’d hurt Gr-” Gulping back a sob, Molly tried to slow her breathing, but every word was excruciating. “I was too scare- I didn’t even go home. I kept trying to ring Sherlock, but by the time he got there they’d-”

“Jim Moriarty will not come back,” purred Linely.

Lip trembling, Molly confessed- “I stole that phone- the one Sherlock kept- I knew where it was and when he wouldn’t be near it. I knew he wouldn’t pay attention to me. No one does-”

“Shhhhh,” cooed Linley, the tips of her fingers brushing Molly’s cheek. “My girl, if that were true­ then you would not be here.”

 

 

 

The windowless med-bay of Scotland yard reeked of blood, bleach and just a hint of mould. In addition to its unique musk, the only entrance was a door that locked from the outside, making it the only cell in Scotland Yard immune to any of Sherlock’s usual unofficial discharges. The only way he could get out was by hurting anyone who came in. Without Greg, and his favors from Mycroft diminishing by the day, violence was not an efficient option. Still, he thought his mood had a high probability of increasing with a tad of violence, especially if the tad of violence involved Mycroft.

The mini air-conditioning unit in the corner above his head gurgled. Folding his arms across the blood staining his shirt, Sherlock tried to ignore the goosebumbs tickling his skin.

The room was barely bigger than a broom closet. Even if the air-con was a decade past it’s expiry, Sherlock shivered his way into a sitting position on the foldout stretcher bed. He was counting the snaps of his tendons, when his brother descended through the locked med-bay door.

“Where is she?”

“At least wait until I’m in the room, Sherlock,” said Mycroft, his voice half sneer, half exasperation. “Besides, you can’t to talk to her until the police get something from her. Nor can I, as a matter of fact.”

“I assume by police, you mean Sally,” Sherlock spat.

Mycroft tutted, “Now, now, brother mine. Judging from my little birds, the two of you were starting to get along. Don’t get petty now because she’s arrested your-”

Severing the end of his brother’s taunt with a look, Sherlock didn’t blink as Mycroft cleared his throat, “Irene Adler,” he muttered, the bemused undertone one of Sherlock’s least favorite mannerisms of his elder brother’s.

“Well, then.” The higher pitched tone of his voice had nowhere to go in the tiny room. “Since we’ve got a few minutes,” Sherlock fixed his brother with glower. “Let me ask you something, brother mine,” the bitterness in his voice stung his dry throat, but he continued. “Has any aspect of my life been outside of your control, or can I quite literally blame my big brother for everything that’s happened to me?”

“Sherlock, you’re-”

“I’m what?” snarled Sherlock. “Not saying what you want me to say? What you planned on me saying?” He couldn’t remember getting to his feet, but he was glaring down his broken nose at Mycroft now. The distant pain of his cuts and bruises ushering red into his vision as he sliced through his brother’s attempt to speak.

“You told me you were sorry all those years ago and I thought you were apologising for her betrayal, but it was your own, wasn’t it? Making me sit in your office, condemn her for everything she’d done- you even said you wished your agents were as good as her,” a humourless snigger simmered off Sherlock’s lips. “I didn’t listen. I was never your plan, was I? No, no, no- not me- not your stupid baby brother, no. She was.” Sherlock heard himself laugh, as if he was watching himself on a cinema screen, as if his own panting was a recording. “And you,” he hissed. “You moved me around on a chessboard, me thinking I was your most valued piece, but I was just a pawn, strategically played to protect your queen.”

The accusation curdled the air, making the coolness of the room insignificant, hanging over Mycroft Holmes like a cocked pistol, and Sherlock’s finger wasn’t trembling at the trigger.

Mycroft exhaled, the long wispy sound making time immeasurable as Sherlock’s battered knuckles itched to hit him.

“A stunning allegation, Sherlock,” stated Mycroft, as if they’d been playing deductions. “However,” Mycroft licked his lips, “I can hardly take credit for a strategy that wasn’t mine.”

 

 

 

“Sargant Donovan, we can’t keep meeting like this.”

“Stand up, Miss Adler.”

“What for?”

Sally nodded at the officers on her heels in the doorway. “Your information on Moran checked out,” she said, as the two officers sidled past her. “We found a laptop wired up to CCTV in that apartment you gave us, across from Molly Hooper’s.” The two men hauled Irene Adler to her feet, shoving her forward. Sally waited for the flick of the plastic bonds fastening around Irene’s wrist.

Tossing her head back, Irene chuckled. “I do love a little bondage.”

Sally grunted, “You’re going to talk to Sherlock.”

“Bondage, Sherlock Holmes…” she mused, before a crease crinkled her brow. “When I dreamt about this you weren’t here, Sergeant,” Irene bit her lip, sliding her eyes over Sally, “not that I’m complaining.”

Sally rolled her eyes, “Take her to Greg’s office and guard the door.”

 

 

 

The plastic bonds secured around Sherlock’s wrists made the tips of his fingers numb. Pins and needles crawled up his fingers over his knuckles into his palms, turning his blood to static television as it sprinted through his veins from his heart.

“Are you even listening, Sherlock?” Mycroft’s voice skittered across his attention.

Raising his eyes from his knees up to his brother’s glare, Sherlock resisted the urge to launch himself at his older brother. However, a small part of him didn’t want to add a pile of desecrated office supplies to Inspector Lestrade’s difficult night. His glower mutinous, Sherlock responded through gritted teeth.

“10 minutes. I heard you.”

“The British Security Service need to question her-”

“Yes, thank you.” Sherlock snapped, “Now, go, gather your underlings and get out of my sight.”

Mycroft rolled his eyes and removed himself from Lestrade’s office, taking Sherlock’s urge to kick his shins with him and leaving Sherlock alone.

Printers hummed, shoes shuffled, heels clicked, the wall clock in Lestrade’s office ticked, but none of those sounds told Sherlock where _she_ was. Somewhere on the floor outside, a coffee machine growled and ground against the air. Sherlock flicked his nostrils at the hint of 2-pound coffee beans. Outside Lestrade’s window, car horns bickered with traffic lights and disgruntled pedestrians 3 floors below. Everything human beings did made noise. When you lived in London, silence was a bedtime story.

Lestrade’s office door whined it’s way open and 4 pairs of shoes bumbled their way inside.  Sherlock hadn’t realized he’d closed his eyes until a mug shattering dully against the carpet snapped them open.

His eyes found hers so fast, the five syllables that made up ‘immediately’ were too slow to describe the speed.

Somewhere outside of their shared gaze, a gruff voice said, “10 minutes.” The owner of the voice secured Irene’s plastic bonds to the arm of the chair they sat her in, fussing over their tightness, but her eyes didn’t wander from his own. After a moment, Lestrade’s door swung back into its place.

Palms sweating, Sherlock rubbed his wrists together behind his back, acutely aware that the buzz of human life outside of Greg’s office didn’t mask the pounding of his own pulse sprinting in his ears.

“Talk,” he said, not even blinking to break her gaze. “You wanted to explain – here’s your chance.”

Her lips twitched up. Sherlock pulled his eyes off them. “How’s your head?” she asked.

Sherlock clamped his mouth shut.

“You really think I can summarize years of planning in 10 minutes?”

“You always told me you love a challenge.”

Irene sniggered, “Are you asking me out on a date?”

Sherlock groaned, “Why did you blow up half my apartment?”

“Call it a contingency plan.”

“For what?”

“For not blowing up half your apartment.”

Sherlock leaned over the desk that separated them. “Do not,” he breathed, “think you are so indestructible that you can murder 2 people, send me on a goose chase around London, shoot my friend and expect me to banter with you. This is my 5th night without decent sleep. We’re done unless you tell me what the hell is going on.”

Irene sighed, “It’s not fake. Moriarty’s message, he’s alive.”

Blinking, Sherlock shook his curls out of his eyes, “Obviously, part of his game. Next.”

“His game?” Irene chuckled. “Alright, then.”

Sherlock frowned as Irene shifted her weight as best she could with her arm harnessed to the chair. “Why do you think he’d release that video?” she asked, with an air that suggested she was interviewing Sherlock for a job.

“Post-mortem insurance.”

Irene raised an eyebrow, “For what?”

“Influence,” Sherlock answered. “Jim had enemies, enemies that would profit grotesquely if they knew he was dead.”

Her pupils flashed, “Nice theory,” she mused. 

“Is this a game?”

“You said it was,” her voice was so cool it could have solidified on her lips.

Heat throbbed throughout Sherlock’s chest. Sweat trickled down between his shoulder blades. He wanted to move, pace, leave, but the adrenaline was the only thing that kept his bruises quiet, and the plastic bonds dug down into his wrists whenever he moved. His intake of breath was sharp.

“Why the bodies? Why the morgue?”

She leaned forward. Eyebrows raised as if he had asked her what colour the sky was. “Because Miss Hooper works there,” she answered.

Sherlock recoiled, “They were a message for her?” he swallowed. “What the hell were you doing? Warning her you were going to shoot her? Why the rats? Trevor’s 4 leaf calling card?” He lowered his voice to a hiss, “Wanted me out of the way so you could kill Molly Hooper? I never pegged you as a jealous woman,” he snarled.

Irene snorted with laughter, the sudden outburst making her stitches wince. “God,” she sighed, gasping, “you are lacking sleep.”

Heat dashed up his cheeks as she continued to giggle. But the thud following his calculated kick to Lestrade’s desk brought her back to her senses. “We have five minutes before my brother waltzes in here with Lady Smallwood and the rest of the British Security Council to escort you to Mi5 to be tried for treason, meaning you have 5 minutes to convince me they’re wrong.” He paused, “You have Trevor locked up 400 meters beneath our shoes, you broke into my apartment and stole a personal item to make me believe you were in danger, you sent me crawling through Abandoned London – why?”

“Because,” she drawled, crossing her left knee over the other, “I needed you to tell everyone that. Everyone and anyone: ‘Victor Trevor is back in London’. I knew Linley’s hypnotism would keep you from remembering what happened in Edinburgh. I knew you weren’t sure where Trevor was and I knew if you thought I was in danger, you wouldn’t wait for more information to start looking for him.”

Sherlock listened to himself cackle, as if he was listening to their conversation through a locked door. The sound crackled in the space between his face and the Woman’s and all at once he was back in his body, back in the chair, back boiling in his own blood and she – she was _smiling._

“Mr Holm-”

“No.”

“Sherlock-”

“All that time in Istanbull, Paris, Edinburgh, I thought that you-” Sherlock bit his tongue, pain barricading whatever words his brain had been going to cough up at the end of that phrase, swallowing them back down and burying them under his lungs. “A lot of people can’t tell the difference between an enemy and an antagonist. How naïve I was, thinking of you as the latter,” he exhaled, spotting his brother and Lady Smallwood in the corridor beyond Lestrade’s office door. “I was your ally, but you treated me like an enemy. So, my brother is going to treat like all the rest.”

“When you take a breath between your monologues, do you ever consider that everything involving you isn’t about you? I left a rose by your bedside when you were shot in the chest, if I had an inclination to talk to you I certainly don’t need to kill two people and decorate a morgue with them. Texting is far more convenient. I don’t have to get out of bed.”

“What-”

“Wake up, Mr Holmes,” she whispered as 4 cologne infested figures shuffled into Lestrade’s office. “Or, better yet,” two men detached her from the chair and shoved her to her feet, “catch up,” and with a wink, Irene Adler was lead from the room and shuffled along the corridor outside. When her footsteps had died away, Sally stomped into the room.

“Where the hell are they taking her?!”

“Untie me and I’ll tell you,” Sherlock snapped back.

But a crashing from somewhere outside Greg’s office cut Sally’s comeback in half. Sally whipped around, seeking the source of the chaos. Whatever she saw, her heavy-lidded eyes widened and she scrambled from Greg’s office toward the indiscernible raised voices.

Sherlock swore through his clenched jaw, “Sally-Ou-!” Each nerve in his body’s protest as he twisted around his fractured ribs set his teeth on edge as he attempted to wrench his wrists free of the bonds behind his back.

“You don’t have the authority!” Sally bellowed, her voice carrying down the corridor Sherlock couldn’t see from where he was tied. But no one responded as the unmistakeable click clack of platform heels approached Lestrade’s office. Sherlock stiffened as the back of Sally’s head appeared in the doorway, coils shaking as she reprimand someone just outside of the office window’s reach. “No NGO could possibly have jurisdiction over this case!”

Sherlock heard a sigh issue from Sally’s opponent and the outline of a badge was shoved in Sally’s face. The stiff authority in her stance evaporated.

“Will that suffice?” asked a female voice, the accent too obscured for Sherlock to place.

Sally’s curls jerked forward, “Just through here,” she said, her voice as robotic as her body as she stepped aside and the woman she had been questioning came into Sherlock’s view of the door.

Her green eyes sparked, settling on Sherlock as, for the second time in the last 12 hours his senses vacated the moment his body currently resided in.

For a handful of seconds, the woman standing in front of him in Lestrade’s office was standing in front of him with a handgun tremoring in her hand, black paint caked on her face. The memory swayed. Someone was shouting, but the words bubbled as if Sherlock was sitting at the bottom of a pool, echoing their way down…

“MR. HOLMES!” Sherlock gasped as his mind shattered back to the present. “Get up and come with me.” Disorientation making him obedient, Sherlock staggered upright, flexing his suddenly free fingers. “You with us?” The woman asked- _Scottish?_

Sherlock nodded, blinking his resurfacing memories away.

“Follow me,” Marley orde- _Wait_ , _Marl-_

“Marlene Parring?” stuttered Sherlock as he fell into step behind her stilettoes. They were the same thunder cloud shade as her skirt and blazer. Her mass of black coils framing her emerald colored eyes as she peered over her shoulder to wink at him.    

The pair of them shuffled into the lift, Marley hitting the carpark level before anyone could join them. Neither of them spoke until the lift doors closed and rattled their way downward.

Under the fluorescent lights, Marley’s cheeks shimmered like soil in a sun shower as she grinned.

“Looking for a lift to Mi5?” she laughed.

“Who are you?”

Marley chuckled, “You mean it took you until now to wonder how the daughter of an undocumented Jamaican immigrant was Victor Trevor’s chosen Admiral?” Memories prickled at the edges of Sherlock’s thoughts, but he pushed them back as she continued. “I didn’t believe Irene when she said that you ain’t quite as intuitive when she’s around, but-” Marley puffed out her cheeks, “Fooled you more than twice, hasn’t it?”

“Hasn’t what?”

“That heart of yours. Don’t bother pretendin’- I know first hand what it walks like.”

The lift grunted to a halt and the doors trundled open. Marley, had sidled through the half open gap before Sherlock bounded out of the elevator in her wake. A few strides and a car pulled up beside her. Without waiting for it to stop she climbed into the sleek black audi and gestured for Sherlock to do the same. The passenger door opened automatically. Sherlock ducked inside and, as soon as both Sherlock and Marley were secured, the car lurched back up to speed.

A tinted window blocked the driver’s identity from view. The newness of the vehicle interior crinkled Sherlock’s nostrils as he scanned the car’s roomy leather interior.

“Did my brother send you?”

“Ha!” Marley cackled, pulling a briefcase out from under her seat and setting it down on her crossed knees. Inclining his chin toward it, Sherlock tried to sneak a look at the case’s contents. But, deliberately or not, Marley readjusted its angle. Sherlock sat back and took a breath.

“This is not a government vehicle. Bureaucratic dictators feigning democracy and protection of its people don’t drive around in unmarked unreleased Audis.” Eyebrows creeping up toward her curls, Marley paused her suitcase inspection as Sherlock continued, “You entered Scotland Yard on your own. No visible security means you want to keep a low profile, but the car and expensive shoes show your influence. We’re on our way to Mi5, but I don’t see any kind of clearance card on your person. You’re not with them, or the government, no non-government organisation gets around in one of these,” he gestured to the car, “but you don’t seem to be anxious about getting me or yourself pass the front door when I’m supposed to be under arrest, you know Mi5 will let you through because of your influence or reputation. As far as I know you’re Miss Adler’s closest contact. The last thing you would do is move against her. You’re here to use your influence to help her somehow. My brother implicated Miss Adler has an undefinable amount of value to him as an agent and there is no lengths my brother won’t go to in order to protect a priceless asset. So, I’ll ask you one more time, did my brother send you?”

Marley flipped the lid of the suitcase, snapping it shut and locking it as the car slowed to a crawl.

“No, Sherlock,” she answered, slinging her handbag over one shoulder and gripping the suitcase with her right hand. “But after I am done here, he’ll want to take credit for my presence and its my job to let him. Now,” he caught the pack of wet wipes she tossed across the middle seat to him, “Clean yourself up, Mr Holmes. You’ve got a court date.”

 

 

Lady Elizabeth Smallwood was both the first person to enter the overly air-conditioned conference chamber and the last person to expect Irene Adler to be already seated at the end of the long table with nothing holding her here but handcuffs.

“Where is the security?” barked Elizabeth. “Why are you here unattended?”

Irene Adler looked around her in eyerolling outrage, “It’s almost as if your security perceived me to be an adult female, rather than a juvenile so overly confident they believe they can escape the bowels of the secret service.”

“Hard to believe they didn’t perceive you as overconfident,” Elizabeth muttered spreading the stack of files over the polished table surface, blocking her own reflection and sitting down.

A stout woman with sunspots blotted over her cheeks shuffled in. Without announcing herself, she settled herself into a chair away from the long table and buried herself in her notebook. She had barely flicked over to a blank page when Mycroft Holmes’ unmistakable cologne announced his entrence. Lady Smallwood remained hunched over her files, but returned Mycroft’s nod when he placed himself in the seat beside her.

There were approximately 6 empty chairs, 3 on each side, between Irene Adler and where Lady Smallwood and Mycroft sat. The only other vacant chair, stationed to Lady Smallwood’s right, only stayed empty for a few minutes before Peter King joined them.

King, Smallwood & Holmes made up the British Security Council. Together they had engineered decisions, procedures, patterns and operations that altered the future history of the globe. Every international operation involving Britain’s interest had, at one point or another, been revised, reviewed, recovered, co-ordinated or destroyed by the 3 people had once sat opposite Jim Moriarty, Charles Augustest Magnussen and now, Irene Adler.

“Shall we begin?” asked King.

Lady Smallwood nodded, Mycroft gestured to the scribe and Irene Adler straightened up in her chair.

Mycroft spoke first, “This 245th emergency session of the British Security Service Council, commencing presently on April 22nd at 9:01pm is to determine Irene Adler’s involvement in covert criminal organisations and the extent of which the charges of treason, conspiracy and murder are apt allegations.”

“Irene Adler,” Lady Smallwood jereked her eyes up from the blackened lines of her declassified file spread, “you captured the attention of this council in January of 2011. A phone in your possession contained sensitive information about various operations and high impact persons, the publication of which would endanger British citizens. According to the same records that detail the nature and outcome 2011’s events,” Lady Smallwood gestured at the files, “you were captured by a terrorist sell in Pakistan and beheaded. Can you confirm these facts?”

Irene’s eyebrows scurried up toward her hairline, “You need me to confirm my head is attatched to my body?”  

“Please explain how Mi5’s raw data bases report your status as deceased,” clarified Peter King.

Irene Adler shrugged, rattling her handcuffs, “Perhaps a typographical error?”

“Miss Adler, these proceedings can and will result in your execution if you refuse to co-operate,” Mycroft snapped.

A smirk quirked on her lips, “Alternatively,” she tutted, “you could just fix the typo?”

“Why this immature rhetoric, Miss Adler? What are you doing?” Lady Smallwood asked.  

“Well,” yawned Irene, “Now, that you mention it: I am waiting for my lawyer.”

“Your lawyer?” spat Mycroft. “This is a top-secret interrogative hearing, the nature of which is above and beyond reproach by any legal proceedings-”

“You will cease to withhold my client’s right to a defence, thank you.”

 Lady Smallwood, grateful her chair was one that swivelled almost threw herself out of her seat to gain visual of the woman who had just interrupted Mycroft.

Tall, impeccably dressed in a fitted navy blue suit and trailing Sherlock Holmes in her shadow, Marlene Parring strode across the room and settled herself into the vacant chair beside Irene Adler. The two women exchanged a look of the kind that suggested this was definitely not the first time they had met. Meanwhile, Mycroft stood up, shoving out an arm to stop his little brother from venturing further into the room. But it wasn’t until Mycroft spoke that Sherlock dragged his bloodshot eyes from Irene Adler.

“What the hell are you doing with Marlene Parring, Sherlock?”

Sherlock sighed, the breath sounding as though it had to travel an immeasurable distance from his chest to his lips and the journey had been unpleasant, “Trust me, Mycroft,” he half groaned, “I have waited much longer than you have for the answer to that question and if you prevent me from knowing it now I will burn your house to the ground.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I owe you all a thousand apologies for the delay of this chapter and thank you equally as virulently for reading and waiting patiently and sending messages of encouragement.
> 
> Season 4 of Sherlock left me quite angry and disillusioned with the series and I didn't want to write this story from a place of spite. I have always written fanfic from a place of love for these characters and love for their potential to be whole people (even when the people that write them do not see it). I had to step away from the fandom for a little while to calm down. I was just so angry about the way Moffattiss treated Mary and Sherlock's relationship with Irene and their justification for this treatment and don't even get me started on Eurus! Season 4 of Sherlock became the living breathing nightmare of everything I feared that could go wrong with the show. I didn't want to write this like a correction of that. My stories are mine, not better or worse versions of the series. So, I had to re-evaluate this story a bit and reconcile that season 4 happened and while I pride myself on my work being as canon as possible, I will not associate this piece with Sherlock's 4th Season.
> 
> If you're interested, you check out my critiques of season 4 on youtube:  
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRu2WqlKYzg
> 
> much peace and love to all of you and a very happy easter as well xox  
> love, merry  
> hmu: @akajustmerry on twitter and tumblr :)

**Author's Note:**

> Well, here I am writing long fanfiction again, hello, thank you for reading and welcome! If you have come here off reading my other works (thank you!), this story is not connected to my other fanfiction. It is a completely new story and I'm really excited about it. Hopefully you are too. Don't be afraid to tell me how you feel in the comments or in my inbox on tumblr (letzplaymurder.tumblr.com) even if you wanna send me something like "yo merry i have no idea wtf is happening because your writing is awful af" that is super useful to me and I'll kiss your forehead. Plus, I have set myself the challenge of finishing this story before season 4 airs so if you see I haven't updated in a while pleaseeeee send me a comment or message to kick my butt 
> 
> so, in the words of my beloved buddy Deadpool *rubs hands together* time to make the chimy f**king chungas!
> 
> Love, Merry xo
> 
> @akajustmerry on twitter as well :)


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